■Mi .' 



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DISCOXJIISEIS 

ON THE 

CHRISTIAjSr RETELATIOT^ 



VIKWKD IN CONXECTION WITH THE 



MODEEN ASTRONOMY. 



ASTRONOMICAL 



COMMEECIAL DISCOUESES. 



BY THE LATE 



THOMAS CHALMERS, D.D., LL.D. 



NEW YORK: 
EGBERT CARTER & BROTHERS, 

630 BROADWAY. 

1871. 



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PREFACE. 



The astronomical objection against the truth of 
the Gospel, does not occupy a very prominent place 
in any of our Treatises of Infidelity. It is often, 
however, met with in conversation — and we have 
known it to be the cause of serious perolexity and 
alarm in minds anxious for the solid estabushment 
of their religious faith. 

There is an imposing splendour in the science 
of Astronomy ; and it is not to'be wondered at, if 
the light it throws, or appears to throw, over other 
tracks of speculation than those which are properly 
its own, should at times dazzle and mislead an 
inquirer. On this account, we think it were a 
service to what we deem a true and a righteous 
cause, could we succeed in dissipating this illusion, 
and in stripping Infidelity of those pretensions to 
enlargement, and to a certain air of philosophical 
greatness, by which it has often become so de- 
structively alluring to the young, and the ardent, 
and the ambitious. 

In my first Discourse, I have attempted a 
eketch of the Modern Astronomy — nor have I 
wished to throw any disguise over that comparative 
littleness which belongs to our planet, and which 



fi PREFACS. 

gives to the argument of Freethinkers all iti 

plausibility. 

This argument involves in it an assertion and an 
mference. The assertion is, that Christianity is a 
religion which professes to be designed for the single 
benefit of our world ; and the inference is, that God 
cannot be the author of this religion, for He wouJd 
not lavish on so insignificant a field, such peculiar 
and such distinguishing attentions, as are ascribed 
to Hitn in the Old and New Testament. 

Christianity makes no such profession. That 
it is designed for the single benefit of our world is 
altogether a presumption of the Infidel himself — 
and feeling that this is not the only example of 
temerity which can be charged on the enemies of 
our faith, I have allotted my second Discourse to 
the attempt of demonstrating the utter repugnance 
of such a spirit with the cautious and enlightened 
philosophy of modern times. 

In the course of this Sermon I have offered a 
tribute of acknowledgment to the theology of Sir 
Isaac Newton ; and in such terms, as if not farther 
explained, may be liable to misconstruction. The 
grand circumstance of applause in the character of 
this great man, is, that unseduced by all the mag- 
nificence of his own discoveries, he had a solidity 
of mind which could resist their fascination, and 
keep him in steady attachment to that Book, whose 
general evidences stamped upon it the impress of A 
real communication from Heaven. This was the 
sole attribute of his theology which I had in my 
eye when I presumed to eulogize it. I do not 
think, that, amid the distraction and the engross 



PREFACE. tH 

ment o^ his other pursuits, he has at all times 
succeeded in his interpretation of the Book ; else 
he would never, in my apprehension, have abetted 
the l^iding doctrine of a sect or a system, which 
has now nearly dwindled away from public obser- 
vation. 

In my third Discourse I am silent as to the 
assertion, and attempt to combat the inference that 
is founded on it. I insist, that upon all the 
analogies of nature and of providence, we can lay 
no limit on the condescension of God, or on the 
multiplicity of his regards even to the very humblest 
departments of creation ; and that it is not for us, 
who see the evidences of divine wisdom and care 
spread in such exhaustless profusion around us, to 
say, that the Deity would not lavish all the wealth 
of His wondrous attributes on the salvation even of 
our solitary species. 

At this point of the argument, I trust that the 
intelligent reader may be enabled to perceive, in 
the adversaries of the Gospel, a twofold dereliction 
from the maxims of the Baconian philosophy : that, 
in the lirst instance, the assertion which forms the 
groundwork of their argument, is gratuitously 
fetched out of an unknown region, where they are 
utterly abandoned by the light of experience ; and 
that, in the second instance, the inference they 
urge from it is, in the face of manifold and unde- 
niable truths, all lying v/ithin the safe and accessible 
field of human observation. 

In my subsequent Discourses, I proceed to the 
informations of the Record. The Infidel objection 
drawn from Astronomy, may be considered as by 



chis time disposed of; and if we have succeeded in 
clearing it away, so as to deliver the Christian 
testimony from all discredit upon this ground, then 
may we submit, on the strength of other evidences, 
to be guided by its information. We shall thus 
learn, that Christianity has a far more extensive 
bearing on the other orders of creation, than the 
Infidel is disposed to allow ; and, whether he will 
own the authority of this information or not, he 
will at least be forced to admit, that the subject- 
matter of the Bible itself is not chargeable with 
that objection which he has attempted to fasten 
upon it. 

Thus, had my only object been the refutation of 
the Infidel argument, I might have spared the last 
Discourses of the Series altogether. But the 
tracks of Scriptural information to which they 
directed me, I considered as worthy of prosecution 
on their own account — and I do think, that much 
may be gathered from these less observed portions 
of the field of revelation, to cheer, and to elevate, 
and to guide the believer. 

But in the management of such a discussion as 
this, though for a great degree of this effect it 
would require to be conducted in a far higher style 
than I am able to sustain, the taste of the human 
mihd may be regaled, and its understanding put 
into a state of the most agreeable exercise. Now, 
this is quite distinct from the conscience being made 
to feel the force of a personal application; nor could 
I either brin.g this argument to itii close in the 
pulpit, or offer it to the general notice of the world, 
without adverting, in the last Discourse, to a 



delusion, \\hich, I fear, is carrying forward thou- 
sands, and tens of thousands, to an undone eternity. 

I have closed the Series with an Appendix of 
Scriptural Authorities. I found that I could not 
easily interweave them in the texture of the Work, 
and have, therefore, thought fit to present them in 
a separate form. I look for a twofold benefit 
from this exhibition — first, to those more general 
readers, who are ignorant of the Scriptures, and 
of the richness and variety which abound in them 
— and, secondly, to those narrow and intolerant 
professors, who take an alarm at the very sound 
and semblance of philosophy ; and feel as if there 
was an utterly irreconcilable antipathy between its 
lessons on the one hand, and the soundness and 
piety of the Bible on the other. It were well, I 
conceive, for our cause, that the latter could be- 
come a little more indulgent on this subject ; that 
they gave up a portion of those ancient and here- 
ditary prepossessions, which go so far to cramp 
and to enthral them ; that they would suffer 
theology to take that wide range of argument and 
of illustration which belongs to her ; and that, less 
sensitively jealous of any desecration being brought 
upon the Sabbath or the pulpit, they would suffer 
her freely to announce all those truths, which either 
serve to protect Christianity from the contempt of 
science, or to protect the teachers of Christianity 
from those invasions, which are practised both on 
the sacredness of the office, and on the solitude of 
its devotional and intellectual labours. 

To these Astronomical Discourses, I have adde.J 
some others, illustrative of the connexion between 



I rairrACB. 

Theology and General Science. The argument 
on which we have ventured in one of these 
Discourses, and by which we attempt to reconcile 
the efificacy of prayer with the constancy of visible 
nature, was called forth in opposition to the con- 
temptuous treatment, which certain members of the 
British Senate thought fit to bestow on the proposal 
for a National Fast, at a time when the fearful 
epidemic of cholera had broke forth in various pacta 
of the couutry. 



CONTENTS* 



DISCOURSE I. 

▲ 8KETCU OF THE HOOEEK iUITaOXOHT. 

•* When I consider thy heavenu, the work of thy fio^^ro, 
the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained ; VThafc 
ii man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, 
that thou visitest him ?" — Psalm viii. 3, 4. . . .11 

DISCOURSE 11. 

THE MODESTY OF TR0E SCIBMCB. 
•* And if any man think that he kuoweth any thing, he 
knoweth nothing yet as he ought to know. " — 1 Coa. viii. S. 41 

DISCOURSE III. 

ON THE EXTENT OF THE DIVINE CONDESCENSIOM. 
•• Who is like unto the Lord our God, who dwelleth on 
high? Who humbleth liimself to behold the things that 
are in heaven, and in the earth 1" — Psalm cxiiL 6, 6. . '38 

DISCOURSE IV. 

OH THE KNOWLEDGE OF MAN'S MOBAL HISTORT UT THE 
DISTANT PLACES OF CKEATION. 

•• Which things the angels desire to look into." — 1 Pet. LIS. 90 
DISCOURSE V. 

ON THE SYMPATHY THAT IS FELT FOB MAN IN THE DISTANT 
PLACES OF CBEATION. 

••I say unto you. That likewise joy shall be in heaven ovkt 
one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nino 
just persons, which need no repentance," — Luke xv. 7. . IIS 



ZU CONTENTS. 



DISCOURSE VI. 

OK THK COXTE8T FOB AN ASCENDANCY OTEB KAN, AMOVaiT 

THE HIGHE& OaDERS OF INTELLIGENCE. 
" And, having spoiled principalities and powers, he made a 
■how of them openly, triumphing over them in it."— Co- 
LOSSIANS ii. 15 .S3 

DISCOURSE VII. 

ON THE SLENDER INFLUENCE OF MERE TASTE AND SENBUILIT* 
IN MATTERS OF RELIGION. 

** And, lo ! thou art unto them as a very lovely song of one 
that hath a pleasant voice, and can play well on an instru- 
ment : for tV.ey hear thy words, but they do them not." 
— EzEKlEL xxxiii. 32, .... .132 

APFENDIX . 181 



BXKOUBBES OF A KINDRED CHARACTER WITH THE PRECEDING. 

DISCOURSE I. 

THE CONSTANCY OF GOD IN HIS WORKS AN ARGUMENT I OR THE 

FAITHFULNESS OF GOD IN HIS WORD. 

*' For ever, O Lord, thy word is settled in heaven. Tliy faith- 
fulness IS unto all generations : thou liast established the 
earth, and it abideth. They continue this day according 
to thine ordinances: for all are thy servants." — Psalm 
cxix. 89, 90, 91 203 

DISCOURSE II. 

ON THE CONSISTENCY BETWEEN THE EFFICACY OF FRAYEB» 
AND THE UNIFORMITY OF NATURE. 

** Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last dayi 
scoffers, walking after their own lusts, — and saying, Where 
it the promise of his coming ? for since the fathers fell 
asleep, all things continue as they were ii-om the beginning 
of the creation."— 2 Pjetek iii. 3, 4 SS4 



CONTEN'i'S. Xil' 

DISCOURSE III. 

THB TRANSITORY NATURE OF VISIBLE THINGS. 

* The things which are seen are temporal." — 2 Cor. iv. 18. 263 
DISCOURSE IV. 

ON THE NEW HEAVENS AND THE NEW EARTH. 

" Nevertheless we, according to his promise, look for new 
heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness." 
— 2 Peter iii. 13. . . .... 280 

DISCOURSE V. 

THE NATURE OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 

"For the kingdom of God i's not in word, but in power." — 
1 Coa. iv. 20 300 

DISCOURSE VI. 

HEAVEN A CHARACTER AND NOT A LOCALITY. 

*' He that is unjust, let him he unjust still : and he which is 
filthy, let him be filthy still : and he that is righteous, let 
him be righteous still : and he that is holy, let him be holy 
still."— Rev. xxii. 11. 320 

DISCOURSE VII. 

ON THE REASONABLENESS OF FAITH. 

** But before faith came, we were kept under the law, shut 
up unto the faith which should afterwards be revealed."— 
Oalatxans iii. 23 M9 



16 SKETCH OF MODEUN ASTRONOMY. 

benefit and application from his arguments. WTiea 
he wrote an Epistle to a m'xed assembly of Chris- 
tianized Jews and Gentiles, he had often to direct 
such a process of argument to the former, as the 
latter would neither require nor comprehend. 
Now, what should have been the conduct of the 
Gentiles at the reading of that part of the Epistle 
which bore almost an exclusive reference to the 
Jews ? Should it be impatience at the hearing of 
something for which they had no relish or under- 
standing? Should it be a fretful disappointment, 
because every thing that was said, was not said for 
their edification ? Siiould it be angry discontent 
with the Apostle, because, leaving them in the dark, 
he had brought forward nothing for them, tiirough 
the whole extent of so many successive chapters ? 
Some of them may have felt in this way ; but 
surely it would have been vastly more Christian to 
have sat with meek and unfeigned patience, and to 
have rejoiced that the great Apostle had undertaken 
the management of those obstinate prejudices, 
which kept back so many human beings from the 
participation of the Gospel. And should Paul 
have had reason to rejoice, that, by the success of 
his arguments, he had reconciled one or any number 
of Jews to Christianity, then it was the part of 
these Gentiles, though receiving no direct or per- 
sonal benefit from the arguments, to have blessed 
God, and rejoiced along with him. 

Conceive that Paul were at this moment alive, 
and zealously engaged in the work of pressing the 
Christian religion on the acceptance of the various 
classes of society. Should he not still have acted 



SKETCH OF MODERN ASTRONOMY. M 

on the principle of being all things to all men? 
Should he not have accommodated his discussion to 
the prevailing taste, and literature, and philosophy 
of the times ? Should he not have closed with the 
people, whom he was addressing, on some favourite 
principle of their own ; and, in the prosecution of 
ihis principle, might he not have got completely 
beyond the comprehension of a numerous class of 
zealous, humble, and devoted Christians? Now, 
the question is not, how these would conduct them- 
selves in such circumstances? but, how should they 
do it? Would it be right in them to sit with 
impatience, because the argument of the Apostle 
contained in it nothing in the way of comfort or 
edification to themselves ? Should not the bene- 
volence of the Gospel give a different direction to 
their feelings? And, instead of that narrow, 
exclusive, and monopolising spirit, which I fear is 
too characteristic of the more declared professors 
of the truth as it is in Jesus, ought they not to 
he patient, and to rejoice, when to philosophers, 
and to men of literary accomplishment, and to those 
who have the direction of the public taste among 
the upper walks of society, such arguments are 
addressed as may bring home to their acceptance 
also, " the words of this life ?" It is under the 
impulse of these considerations that I have, with 
some hesitation, prevailed upon myself to attempt 
an argument, which I think fitted to soften an(i 
subdue those prejudices which lie at the bottom of 
what may be called the infidelity of natural science; 
ii possible to bring over to the humility of the Gos- 
pel, those who expatiate with delight or. the won- 



IS SKETCH OF MODERN ASTRONOMY. 

ders and the sublimities of creation ; and to coa- 
vince them, that a loftier wisdom still than that 
even ct their high and honourable acquirements, is 
the wisdom of him who is resolved to know nothing 
but Jesus Christ and Him crucified. 

It is truly a most Christian exercise to extract 
a sentiment of piety from the works and the ap- 
pearances of nature. It has the authority of the 
Sacred Writers upon its side, and even our Saviour 
himself gives it the weight and the solemnity of his 
example. " Behold the lilies of the field; they toil 
not, neither do they spin, yet your heavenly Father 
careth for them." He expatiates on the beauty 
of a single flower, and draws from it the delightful 
argument of confidence in God. He gives us to 
see that taste may be combined with piety, and that 
the same heart may be occupied with all that is 
serious in the contemplations of religion, and be at 
the same time alive to the charms and the loveliness 
of nature. 

The Psalmist takes a still loftier flight. He 
leaves the world, and lifts his imagination to that 
mighty expanse which spreads above it and around 
it. He wings his way through space, and wanders 
in thought over its immeasurable regions. Instead 
of a dark and unpeopled solitude, he sees it crowded 
with splendour, and filled with the energy of the 
Divine presence. Creation rises in its immensity 
before him ; and the world, with all which it inherits, 
shrinks into littleness at a contemplation so vast 
and so overpowering. He wonders that he is not 
overlooked amid the grandeur and the variety vthicli 
are on every side of him ; and passing upward frona 



SKETCH OF MODERN ASTRONOMY. 19 

the majesty of nature to the majesty of nature'? 
Architect, he exclaims, "What is man, that thou 
art mindful of him ; or the son of man, that thou 
ghouldest deign to visit him ?" 

It is not for us to say, whether inspiration re- 
vealed to the Psalmist the wonders of the modern 
astronomy. But even though the mind be a perfect 
stranger to the science of these enlightened times, 
the heavens present a great and an elevating spec- 
tacle — an immense concave reposing upon the 
circular boundary of the world, and the innumerable 
lights which are suspended from on high, moving 
with solemn regularity along its surface. It seems to 
have been at night that the piety of the Psalmist was 
awakened by this contemplation, when the moon and 
the stars were visible, and not when the sun had risen 
in his strength, and thrown a splendour around 
him, which bore down and eclipsed all the lesser 
glories of the firmament. And there is much in the 
scenery of a nocturnal sky, to lift the soul to pious 
contemplation. That moon, and these stars, what 
are they ? They are detached from the world, and they 
lift us above it. We feel withdrawn from the earth, 
and rise in lofty abstraction from this little theatre of 
human passions and human anxieties. The mind 
abandons itself to reverie, and is transferred in the 
ecstasy of its thoughts, to distant and unexplored 
regions. It sees nature in the simplicity of her great 
elements, and it sees the God of nature invested with 
llie high attributes of wisdom and majesty. 

Bat what can these lights be ? The curiosity of 
iKe hiunan mind is insatiable; and the mechanism of 
t^ese wonderful heavens has. in all ages, been its 



20 SKETCH OF MODERN ASTRONOMY. 

Suoject and Its employment. It has been reserveil 
for these latter times, to resolve this great and 
interesting question. The sublimest powers of 
philosophy have been called to the exercise, and 
astronomy may now be looked upon as the most 
certain and best established of the sciences. 

We all know that every visible object appears 
less in magnitude as it recedes from the eye. The 
lofty vessel, as it retires from the coast, shrinks 
into littleness, and at last appears in the form of a 
small speck on the verge of the horizon. The 
eagle, with its expanded wings, is a noble object; 
but when it takes its flight into the upper regions 
of the air, it becomes less to the eye, and is seen 
like a dark spot upon the vault of heaven. The 
same is true of all magnitude. The heavenly bodies 
appear small to the eye of an inliabitant of this 
earth, only from the immensity of their distance. 
When we talk of hundreds of millions of miles, it 
is not to be listened to as incredible. For remem- 
ber that we are talking of those bodies which are 
scattered over the immensity of space, and that 
space knows no termination. The conception is 
great and difficult, but the truth is unquestionable. 
By a process of measurement which it is unne- 
cessary at present to explain, we have ascertained 
first the distance, and then the n.pgnitude of some 
of those bodies which roll in t lo firmament ; that 
the sun which presents itself t'* the eye under so 
diminutive a form, is really a globe, exceeding, by 
many thousands of times, the dimensions of the 
earth w hich we inhabit ; that the moon itself has 
the magnitude of a world ; and that even a few o* 



SKETCH OF MODERN ASTRONOMY. 2 

those stars, which appear hke so many lucid poiuta 
to the unassisted eye of the observer, expand into 
large circles upon the application of the telescope, 
and are some of them much larger than the ball 
which we tread upon, and to which we proudly 
apply the denomination of the universe. 

Now, what is the fair and obvious presumption ? 
The world in which we live, is a round ball of a 
determined magnitude, and occupies its own place 
in the firmament. But when we explore the 
unlimited tracts of that space, which is every where 
around us, we meet with other balls of equal or 
superior magnitude, and from which our earth 
would either be invisible, or appear as small as 
any of those twinkling stars which are seen on the 
canopy of heaven. Why then suppose that this 
little spot, little at least in the immensity which 
surrounds it, should be the exclusive abode of life 
and of intelligence ? What reason to think that 
those mightier globes which roll in other parts of 
creation, and which we have discovered to be 
worlds in magnitude, are not also worlds in use and 
in dignity ? Why should we think that the great 
Architect of nature, supreme in wisdom, as He is 
in power, would call these stately mansions into 
existence and leave them unoccupied ? When we 
cast our eye over the broad sea, and look at the 
country on the other side, we see nothing but the 
blue land stretching obscurely over the distant ho- 
rizon. We are too far away to perceive the richness 
of its scenery, or to hear the sound of its population 
Why not extend this principle to the still more 
distant parts of the universe ? What though, from 



22 SKETCH OF MODERN ASTRONOMY. 

iKift remote point of observation, we can see nothing 
but the naked roundness of yon planetary orbs? 
Are we therefore to say, that they are so many vast 
and unpeopled solitudes ; that desolation reigns in 
every part of the universe but ours ; that the whole 
energy of the divine attributes is expended on one 
insignificant corner of these mighty works ; and that 
to this earth alone belongs the bloom of vegetation, 
or the blessedness of life, or the dignity of rational 
and immortal existence ? 

But this is not all. We have something more 
than the mere magnitude of the planets to allege in 
favour of the idea that they are inhabited. We know 
that this earth turns round upon itself; and we 
observe that all those celestial bodies, which are 
accessible to such an observation, have the same 
movement. We know that the earth performs a 
yearly revolution round the sun ; and we can detect, 
in all the planets which compose our system, a re- 
volution of the same kind, and under the same 
circumstances. They have the same succession of 
day and night. They have the same agreeable 
vicissitude of the seasons. To them light and 
darkness succeed each other; and the gaiety of 
summer is followed by the dreariness of winter. 
To each of them the heavens present as varied 
and magnificent a spectacle ; and this earth, the 
encompassing of which would require the labour of 
years from one of its puny inhabitants, is but one 
of the lesser lights which sparkle in their firmament. 
To them, as well as to us, has God divided the light 
from the darkness, and he has called the light day, 
and the darkness he has called night He has said, 



f-aETCH OF UIODERN ASTIIOSOMY. 23 

•«l tbere be ligh^^s in the firmament of theif 
heaven, to divide the day from the night ; and 
let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, 
and for years ; and let them be for hghts in the 
firmament of heaven, to give hght upon their earth ; 
and it was so. And God has also made to them 
great lights. To all of them he has given the sun 
to rule the day ; and to many of them has he given 
moons to rule the night. To them he has made 
the stars also. And God has set them in the 
firmament of heaven, to give light upon their earth ; 
and to rule over the day, and over the night, and 
to divide the light from the darkness ; and God has 
seen that it was good. 

In all these greater arrangements of divine 
wisdom, we can see that God has done the same 
things for the accommodation of the planets that he 
has done for the earth which we inhabit. And 
shall we say, that the resemblance stops here, 
because we are not in a situation to observe it ? 
Shall we say, that this scene of magnificence has 
been called into being merely for the amusement 
of a few astronomers? Shall we measure the 
councils of heaven by the narrow impotence of the 
human faculties ? or conceive, that silence and 
solitude reign throughout the mighty empire ol 
nature ; that the greater part of creation is an empty 
parade ; and that not a worshipper of the Divinity 
is to be found through the wide extent of yon vast 
and immeasurable regions ? 

It lends a delightful confirmation to the argu- 
Baent, when, from the growing perfection of our 
inatruments, ve can discover a new point 0/ 



24 SKETCH OF MODEUN ASTRONOMY. 

resemblance between our Earth and the other }^ 

dies of the planetary system. It is now ascerta*m» 
ed, not merely that all of them have then- day ana 
night, and that all of them have their vicissitudes 
of seasons, and that some of them have their moons 
to rule their night and alleviate the darkness of it ; 
— we can see of one, that its surface rises into in- 
equalities, that it swells into mountains and stretches 
into valleys; of another,' that it is surrounded by 
an atmosphere which may support the respiration 
Df animals ; of a third, that clouds are formed and 
suspended ovex it, which may minister to it al' 
the bloom and luxuriance of vegetation ; and of ^ 
fourth, that a white colour spreads over its aoithern 
regions, as its winter advances, and that, on the 
approach of summer, this whiteness is dissipated — 
giving room to silf^pose, that the element of water 
abounds in it, that it rises by evaporation into its 
atmosphere, that it freezes upon the application of 
cold, that it is precipitated in the form of snov/, that 
it covers the ground w'th a fleecy mantle, which 
melts away from the heat of a more vertical sun ; 
and that other worlds bear a resemblance to our 
own, in the same yearly round of beneficent and 
interesting changes. 

Who shall assign a limit to the discoveries of 
future ages? Who can prescribe to science her 
boundaries, or restrain the active and insatiable 
curiosity of man within the circle of his present 
acquirements ? We may guess with plausibility 
what we cannot anticipate with confidence. The 
day may yet be coming, when our instruments of 
observation shall be inconceivably more powerful 



SKETCH OF MODERN ASTRONOMY. 25 

riiey may ascertain still more decisive points of 
resemblance. I'hey may resolve the same ques- 
tion by the evidence of sense, which is now so 
abundantly convincing by the evidence of analogy. 
They may lay open to us the unquestionable ves- 
tiges of art, and industry, and intelligence. We 
may see summer throwing its green mantle over 
these mighty tracts, and we may see them left 
naked and colourless after the flush of vegetation 
has disappeared. In the progress of years or of 
centuries, we may trace the hand of cultivation 
spreading a new aspect over some portion of a 
planetary surface. Perhaps some large city, the 
metropolis of a mighty empire, may expand into a 
visible spot by the powers of some future telescope. 
Perhaps the glass of some observer, in a distant 
4ge, may enable him to construct the map of ano- 
ther world, and to lay down the surface of it in s& 
its minute and topical varieties. But there is no 
end of conjecture ; and to the men of other timesi 
we leave the full assurance of what we can assert 
with the highest probability, that yon planetary 
orbs are so marry worlds, that they teem with life, 
and that the mighty Being who presides in high 
authority over this scene of grandeur and astonish- 
ment, has there planted the worshippers of His 
glory. 

Did the discoveries of science stop here, we 
have enough to justify the exclamation of the Psal- 
mist, " What is man, that thou art mindful of him; 
or the son of man, that thou shouldest deign to 
visit him?" They widen the empire of creation 
far beyond the hmits which were formerly assigned 

VOL. vri. B 



•'/%, 



26 SKETCH OF MODERN ASTUONOMY. 

to it. They give us to see thcat yon sun, throned 
in the centre of his planetary system, gives light, 
and warmth, and the vicissitude of seasons, to an 
extent of surface several hundreds of times greater 
than that of the earth which we inhabit. They 
lay open to us a number of worlds, rolling in theii 
respective circles around this vast luminary — and 
prove, that the ball which we tread upon, with all 
its mighty burden of oceans and continents, instead 
of being distinguished from the others, is among 
the least of them ; and, from some of the more 
distant planets, would not occupy a visible point in 
the concave of their firmament. They let us know, 
,that though this miglity earth, with all its myriads 
o^fipople, were to sink into annihilation, there are 
'fipme' worlds where an event so awful to us would 
unnoticed and unknown, and others where it 
dd be nothing more than the disappearance ot 
little star which had ceased from its twinkling. 
We should feel a sentiment of modesty at this just 
but humiliating representation. We should learn 
not to look on our earth as the universe of Goo, 
b>U one paltry and insignificant portion of it ; that 
it is only one of the many mansions which the Su- 
preme Being has created for the accommodation 
of His worshippers, and only one of the many 
worlds rolling in that flood of light which the sun 
pours around him to the outer limits of the plane- 
tary system. 

But is there nothing beyond these limits? The 
planetary system has its boundary, but space has 
none ; and if we wing our fancy there, do we only 
'jHvel through dark and unoccupied regions? There 



SKETCH OF MODERN ASTRONOMY. 27 

are only five, cr at most six, of the planetary orbs 
visible to the naked eye. What, then, is that 
multitude of other lights which sparkle in our fir- 
mament, and fill the whole concave of heaven with 
innumerable splendours ? The planets are all 
attached to the sun ; and, in circling around him, 
they do homage to that influence which binds them 
to perpetual attendance on this great luminary. 
But the other stars do not own his dominion. 
They do not circle around him. To all common 
observation, they remain immoveable ; and each-, 
like the independent sovereign of his own territorj', 
appears to occupy the same inflexible position in 
the regions of immensity. What can we make of 
them? Shall we take our adventurous flight, -tj^*" ' 
explore these dark and untravelled dominions^ 
What mean these innumerable fires lighted up in 
distant parts of the universe ? Are they only 
made to shed a feeble glimmering over this little 
spot in the kingdom of nature ? or do they serve 
a purpose worthier of themselves, to light up other 
worlds, and give animation to other systems ? 

The first thing which strikes a scientific observ- 
er of the fixed stars, is their immeasurable distance. 
If the whole planetary system were lighted up into 
a globe of fire, it would exceed, by many millions 
of times, the magnitude of this world, and yet only 
appear a small lucid point from the nearest of them. 
If a body were projected from the sun with the 
velocity of a cannon-ball, it would take hundreds 
of thousands of years before it described that 
mighty interval which separates the nearest of the 
fixed stars from our sun and from our system. 11 



28 SKETCH OF MODERN ASTRONOMY, 

this earth, which moves at more than the incon* 
ceivable velocity of a milhon and a half miles a-day, 
were to be hurried from its orbit, and to take the 
same rapid flight over this immense tract, it would 
not have arrived at the termination of its journey, 
after taking all the time which has elapsed since 
the creation of the world. These are great num- 
bers, and great calculations ; and the mind feels 
its own impotency in attempting to grasp them. 
We can state them in words. We can exhibit 
them in figures. We can demonstrate them by 
the powers of a most rigid and infallible geometry. 
But no human fancy caii summon up a lively or an 
adequate conception — can roam in its ideal flight 
fjjby.er this immeasurable largeness — can take in this 
'Th^lity space in all its grandeur, and in all its im- 
mensity — can sweep the outer boundaries of such 
a creation — or lift itself up to the majesty of that 
great and invisible arm on which all is suspended. 
But what can those stars be which are seated 
so far beyond the limits of our planetary system ? 
They must be masses of immense magnitude, or 
they could not be seen at the distance of place 
which they occupy. The light which they give 
must proceed from themselves, for the feeble reflec- 
tion of light from some other quarter, would not 
carry through such mighty tracts to the eye of an 
observer. A body may be visible in two ways. 
It may be visible from its own light, as the flame 
of a candle, or the brightness of a fire, or the bril- 
liancy of yonder glorious sun, which lightens all 
below, and is the lamp of the world. Or it may 
be visible from the light which falls upon it, as the 



SKETCH OF MODERN VSTRONOMY. 29 

body which receives its light from a taper — or the 
whole assemblage of objects on the surface of 
the earth, which appear only when the light of 
day rests upon them — or the moon, which, in that 
part of it that is towards the sun, gives out a sil- 
very whiteness to the eye of the observer, while 
the other part forms a black and invisible space in 
the firmament — or as the planets, which shine 
only because the sun shines upon them, and which, 
each of them, present the appearance of a dark 
spot on the side that is turned away from it. Now 
apply this question to the fixed stars. Are they 
luminous of themselves, or do they derive their 
light from the sun, like the bodies of our planetary 
system? Think of their immense distance, and 
the solution of this question becomes evident. The 
sun, like any other body, must dwindle into a less 
apparent magnitude as you retire from it. At the 
prodigious distance even of the very nearest of the 
lixed stars, it must have shrunk into a smaJ indi- 
visible point. In short, it must have become a 
star itself, and could shed no more light than a 
single individual of those glimmering myriads, the 
whole assemblage of which cannot dissipate and 
can scarcely alleviate the midnight darkness of our 
world. These stars are visible to us, not because 
the sun shines upon them, but because they shine 
of themselves, because they are so many luminous 
bodies scattered over the tracts of immensity — in a 
word, because they are so many suns, each throned 
in the centre of his own dominions, and pouring 
a flood of light over his own portion of these 
unlimi table regions. 



30 SKETCH OF MODERN ASTRONOMY. 

At such an immense distance for observation, it 
is not to be supposed, that we can collect many 
points of resemblance between the fixed stars, and 
tile solar star which forms the centre of our plane 
tary system. There is one point of resemblance, 
however, which has not escaped the penetration 
of our astronomers. We know that our sun turns 
Found upon himself, in a regular period of time. 
We also know that there are dark spots scattered 
over his surface, which, though invisible to the naked 
eye, are perfectly noticeable by our instruments. 
If these spots existed in greater quantity upon one 
side than upon another, it would have the general 
effect of making that side darker; and the revolution 
of the sun must, in such a case, give us a brighter 
and a fainter side, by regular alternations. Now, 
there are some of the fixed stars which present this 
appearance. They present us with periodical vari- 
ations of light. From the splendour of a star of the 
first or second magnitude, they fade away into some 
of the inferior magnitudes — and one, by becoming 
invisible, might give reason to apprehend that we 
had lost him altogether — but we can still recognize 
him by the telescope, till at length he reappears 
in his own place, and, after a regular lapse of so 
many days and hours, recovers Im original bright- 
ness. Now, the fair inference from this is, that 
the fixed stars, as they resemble our sun in being 
so many luminous masses of immense magnitude, 
they resemble him in this also, that each of them 
turns round upon his own axis ; so that if any of 
them should have an inequality in the brightness 
«f their sides, this revolution is rendered evident, 



SKETCH OF MODERN ASTRONOMY. 31 

by the regular variations in the degree of hghl 
which it undergoes. 

Shall we say, thei/, of these vast luminaries, 
that they were created in vain ? Were they called 
into existence for no other purpose than to throw 
a tide of useless splendour over the solitudes of 
immensity ? Our sun is only one of these lumi- 
naries, and we know that he has worlds in his train. 
Why should we strip the rest of this princely at- 
tendance ? Why may not each of them be the 
centre of his own system, and give light to his own 
worlds ? It is true that we see them not ; but 
could the fcje of man take its flight into those dis- 
tant regions, it would lose sight of our little world 
before it reached the outer limits of our system — 
the greater planets would disappear in their turn — 
before it had described a small portion of that 
abyss which separates us from the fixed stars, the 
sun would decline into a little spot, and ail its 
splendid retinue of worlds be lost in the obscurity 
of distance — he would at last shrink into a small 
indivisible atom, and all that could be seen of this 
magnificent system, would be reduced to the glim- 
mering of a little star. Why resist any longer the 
grand and interesting conclusion ? Each of these 
stars may be the token of a system as vast and as 
splendid as the one M-hich we inhabit. Worlds 
roll in these distant regions ; and these worlds 
must be the mansions of life and of intelligence. 
In yon gilded canopy of heaven, we see the broad 
aspect of the universe, where each shining point 
presents us with a sun, and each sun with a system 
of worlds — where the Divinity reigns in all the 



32 SKETCH OF MODERN ASTRONOMY. 

grandeur of His attributes — where He peoples inii 
mensity with His wonders ; and travels in the 
greatness of His strength through the dominions 
of one vast and unlimited monarchy. 

The contemplation has no limits. If we ask the 
number of suns and of systems, the unassisted eye 
of man can take in a thousand, and the best tele- 
scope which the genius of man has constructed 
can take in eighty millions. But why subject the 
dominions of the universe to tlie eye of man, or to 
the powers of his genius ? Fancy rtiay take its 
flight far beyond the ken of eye or of telescope. 
It may expatiate in the outer regions of all that in 
visible — and shall we have the boldness to say, 
that there is nothing there ? that the wonders of 
the Almighty are at an end, because we can no 
longer trace His footsteps ? that his omnipotence 
is exhausted, because human art can no longer 
follow Him ? that the creative energy of God has 
sunk into repose, because the imagination is en- 
feebled by the magnitude of its efforts, and can 
keep no longer on the wing through those mighty 
tracts, which shoot far beyond what eye hath seen, 
or the heart of man hath conceived — which sweep 
endlessly along, 
terious infinity ? 

Before bringing to a close this rapid and im- 
perfect sketch of our modern astronomy, it may be 
right to advert to two points of interesting specu- 
lation, both of which serve to magnify our concep- 
tions of the universe, and, of course, to give us a 
more affecting sense of the comparative insignifi- 
cance of this our world. 



SKETCH OF MODERN ASTRONOMY. 66 

by the consideration, that if a body be struck in 
the direction of its centre, it obtains, from this im- 
pulse, a progressive motion, but without any mova- 
ment of revolution being at the same time impress- 
ed upon it. It simply goes forward, but doea 
not turn round upon itself. But, again, should 
the stroke not be in the direction of the centre- 
should the line M^hich joins the point of percussion 
to the centre, make an angle with that line in 
which the impulse \vas communicated, then the 
body is both made to go forward in space, and also 
to wheel upon its axis. In this way, each of our 
planets may have had its compound motion com- 
municated to it by one single impulse ; and, oa 
the other hand, if ever the rotatory motion be com- 
municated by one blow, then the progressive mo- 
tion must go along with it. In order to have the 
first motion without the second, there must be a 
two-fold force applied to the body in opposite di- 
rections. It must be set a-going in the same way 
as a spinning-top, so as to revolve about an axis, 
and to keep unchanged its situation in space. The 
planets have both motions*; and, therefore, may 
have received them by one and the same impulse. 
The sun, we are certain, has one of these motions. 
He has a movement of revolution. If spun round 
his axis by two opposite forces, one on each side 
of him, he may have this movement, and retain an 
inflexible position in space. But if this movement 
was given him by one stroke, he must have a pro- 
gressive motion along with a whirling motion ; or, 
in other words, he is moving forward; he is de- 
scribing a tract in space ; and, in so doing, he car- 



34 SKE-rCH OF MODERN ASPItONOMY. 

rios all his planets and all their secondaries along 
with him. 

But, at this stage of the argument, the matter 
only remains a conjectural point of speculation. 
The sun may have had his rotation impressed upon 
him by a spinning impulse ; or, without recurring 
to secondary causes at all, this movement may be 
coeval with his being, and he may have derived 
both the one and the other from an immediate fiat 
of the Creator. But there is an actually observed 
phenomenon of the heavens, which advances the 
conjecture into a probability. In the course 
of ages, the stars in one quarter of the celestial 
sphere are apparently receding from each other ; 
and, in the opposite quarter, they are apparently 
drawing nearer to each other. If the sun be ap- 
proaching the former quarter, and receding from 
the latter, this phenomenon admits of an easy ex- 
planation ; and we are furnished with a magnifi- 
cent step in the scale of the Creator's workman- 
ship. In the same manner as the planets, with 
their satellites, revolve round the sun, may the sun, 
with all his tributaries, be moving, in common with 
other stars, around some distant centre, from 
which there emanates an influence to bind and to 
subordinate them all. They may be kept from 
approaching each other, by a centrifugal force ; 
without which, the laws of attraction might conso- 
lidate, into one stupendous mass, all the distinct 
globes of which the universe is composed. Our 
sun may, therefore, be only one member of a higher 
family — taking his part, along with millions of 
ftthers, in some loftier system of mechanism, by 



SKETCH OF MODERN ASTRONOMY. 35 

which they are all subjected to one law, and to 
one arrangement — describing the sweep of awiH 
an orbit in space, and completing the mighty revo-. 
lution in such a period of time, as to reduce out 
planetary seasons, and our planetary movements, 
to a very humble and fractionary rank in the scale 
of a higher astronomy. There is room for all this 
in immensity ; and there is even argument for all 
this, in the records of actual observation ; and, 
from the whole of this speculation, do we gather a 
new emphasis to the lesson, how minute is the 
place, and how secondary is the importance of our 
world, an.id the glories of such a surrounding mag- 
nificence. 

But there is still another very interesting tract 
of speculation, which has been opened up to us by 
the more recent observations of astronomy. V/hat 
we allude to, is the discovery of the nebulce. We 
allow that it is but a dim and indistinct light which 
this discovery has thrown upon the structure of 
the universe ; but still it has spread before the eye 
of the mind a field of very wide and lofty contem- 
plation. Anterior to this discovery, the universe 
might appear to have been composed of an indefi- 
nite number of suns, about equi-distant from each 
other, uniformly scattered over space, and each 
encompassed by such a planetary attendance as 
takes place in our own system. But, we have 
now reason to think, that instead of lying uniform- 
ly, and in a state of equi-distance from each other, 
they are arranged into distinct clusters — that, in 
the same manner as the distance of the nearest 
fixed stars so inconceivably superior to that of ou? 



36 SKETCH OF MODERN ASTRONOMY. 

planets from each other, mgrks the separa*^ion of 
the solar systems, so the distance of two contisu 
ous clusters may be so inconceivably superior to 
the reciprocal distance of those fixed stars whicb 
belong to the same cluster, as to mark an equally 
distinct separation of the clusters, and to constitute 
each of them an individual member of some higher 
and more extended arrangement. Tliis carries us 
upwards through another ascending step in the 
scale of magnificence, and there leaves us in the un- 
certainty, whether even here the wonderful pro- 
gression is ended ; and, at all events, fixes the 
assured conclusion in our minds, that, to an eye 
which could spread itself over the whole, the man- 
sion which accommodates our species might be so 
very small as to lie wrapped in microscopical con- 
cealment ; and, in reference to the only Being 
who possesses this universal eye, well might we 
say, " What is man, that thou art mindful of him; 
or the son of man, that thou shouldest deign to 
visit him ?" 

And, after all, though it be a mighty and diffi- 
cult conception, yet who can question it? What 
is seen may be nothing to what is unseen ; for what 
is seen is limited by the range of our instruments. 
What is unseen has no limit; and, though all 
which the eye of ir.an can take in, or his fancy can 
grasp, were swept away, there might still remaifl 
as ample a field, over which the Divinity may ex- 
udate, and which He may have peopled with 
innumerable worlds. If the whole visible creation 
were to disappear, it would leave a solitude behind 
it — but to the Infinite Mind, that can take in thff 



SKETCH OF MODERN ASTRONOMY. 37 

whole system of nature, this solitude might be no- 
thing ; a small unoccupied point in that immensity 
which surrounds it, and. which he may have filled 
with the wonders of his omnipotence. Though 
this earth were to be burned up, though the trumpet 
of its dissolution were sounded, though yon sky 
were to pass away as a scroll, and every visible 
glory, which the finger of the Divinity has inscribed 
on it, were to be put out for ever — an event, so 
awful to us, and to every world in our vicinity, by 
which so many suns would be extinguished, and so 
many varied scenes of life and of population would 
rush into forgetfulness — what is it in the high scale of 
the Almighty's workmanship? a mere shred, which, 
though scattered into nothing, would leave the 
universe of God one entire scene of greatness and 
of majesty. Though this earth, and these heavens, 
were to disappear, there are other worlds which 
roll afar ; the light of other suns shines upon them; 
and the sky which mantles them, is garnished with 
other stars. Is it presumption to gay, that the 
moi-al world extends to these distant and unknown 
regic-ns ? that they are occupied with people ? that 
the charities of home and of neighbourhood flourish 
there ? that the praises of God are there lifted up, 
and his goodness rejoiced in ? that piety has there 
its temples and its offerings ? and the richness of 
the divine attributes is there felt and admired by 
inteUigent worshippers ? 

And what is this world in the immensity which 
teems with them — and what are they who occupy 
it ? The universe at large would suffer as little, 
in its splendour and variety, by the destruction of 



38 SKETCH OF MODERN ASTRONOMY. 

our planet, as the verdure and sublime magnitude 
of a forest would suffer by the fall of a single leaf. 
The leaf quivers on the branch which supports it. 
It lies at the mercy of the slightest accident. A 
breath of wind tears it from its stem, and it lights 
on the stream of water which passes underneath. 
In a moment of time, the life which we know, by 
the microscope, it teems with, is extinguished ; and 
an occurrence so insignificant in the eye of man, 
and on the scale of his observation, carries in it, 
to the myriads which people this little leaf, an event 
as terrible and as decisive as the destruction of a 
world. Now, on the grand scale of the universe, 
we, the occupiers of this ball, which performs its 
little round among the suns and the systems that 
astronomy has unfolded — we may feel the same 
littleness, and the same insecurity. We differ 
from the leaf only in this circumstance, that it 
would require the operation of greater elements to 
destroy us. But these elements exist. The fire 
which rages within, may lift its devouring energy 
to the surface of our planet, and transform it into 
one wide and wasting volcano. The sudden for- 
mation of elastic matter in the bowels of the earth 
— and it lies within the agency of known substances 
to accomplish this — may explode it into fragments. 
The exhalation of noxious air from below, may 
impart a virulence to the air that is around us; 
it may affect the delicate proportion of its ingre- 
dients; and the whole of animated nature may 
wither and die under the malignity of a tainted 
atmosphere. A blazing comet may cross this 
fated planet in its orbit, and realize all the terrors 



SKETCH OF MOUKUN ASTRONOMY. 39 

u'lueh superstition has conceived of it. We cannot 
anticipate with precision the consequences of an 
event which every astronomer must know to he 
within the Umits of ciiance and probabihty. It 
may hurry our globe towards the sun — or drag it 
to the outer regions of the planetary system — or 
give it a new axis of revolution : and the effect, 
which I shall simply announce, without explaining 
it, would be to change the place of the ocean, and 
bring another mighty flood upon our islands and 
continents. These are changes which may happen 
in a single instant of time, and against which no- 
thing known in the present system of things pro- 
vides us with any security. They might not an- 
nihilate the earth, but they would unpeople it ; 
and we who tread its surface with such firm and 
assured footsteps, are at the mercy of devouring 
elements, which, if let loose upon us by the hand 
of the Almighty, would spread sohtude, and silence, 
and death, over the dominions of the world. 

Now, it is this littleness, and this insecurity, 
which make the protection of the Almighty so 
dear to us, and bring, with such emphasis, to every 
pious bosom, the holy lessons of humility and gra- 
titude. The God who sitteth above, and presides in 
high authority over all worlds, is mindful of man ; 
and though at this moment His energy is felt in 
the remotest provinces of creation, we may feel 
the same security in His providence, as if we were 
the objects of His undivided care. It is nor for us 
to bring our minds up to this mysterious agency. 
But such is the incomprehensible fact, that the 
same Being, whose eye is abroad over the whole 



40 SKETCH OF MODERN ASTRONOMY. 

universe, gives vegetation to every blade of grass, 
and motion to every particle of blood wbich cir- 
culates through the veins of the minutest animal ; 
that, though His mind takes into its comprehen- 
sive grasp, immensity and all its v/onders, I am as 
mucli known to Him as if I were the single object 
of His attention ; that He marks all my thoughts*, 
that He gives birth to every feeling and every 
movement within me ; and that, with an exercise 
of power which I can neither describe nor compre- 
hend, the same God who sits in the highest hea- 
ven, and reigns over the glories of the firmament, 
is at my riglit hand, to give me every breath which 
I draw, and every comfort which I enjoy. 

But this very reflection has been appropriated 
to the use of Infidelity, and the very language ot 
the text has been made to bear an application ot 
hostility to the faith. " What is man, that God 
should be mindful of him ; or the son of man, that 
he should deign to visit him ?" Is it likely, says 
the Infidel, that God would send his eternal Son, 
to die for the puny occupiers of so insignificant a 
province in the mighty field of his creation ? 
Are we the befitting objects of so great and so 
signal an interposition? Does not the largeness 
of that field which astronomy lays open to the view 
of modern science, throw a suspicion over the truth 
of the gospel history ? and how shall we reconcile 
the greatness of that wonderful movement which 
was made in heaven for the redemption of fallen 
man, with the comparative meanness and obscu- 
rity of our Jipecies ? 

This is a popular argument against Christianity, 



SKETCH OF MODERN ASTRONOMY. 41 

not much dwelt upon in books, but, we believe, a 
good deal insinuated in conversation, and having 
no small influence on the amateurs of a superficial 
philosophy. At all events, it is right that every 
such argument should be met, and manfully con- 
fronted ; nor do we know a more discreditable 
surrender of our religion, than to act as if she had 
any thing to fear from the ingenuity of her most 
accomplished adversaries. The author of the fol- 
lowing treatise engages in his present undertaking, 
under the full impression that a something may be 
found with which to combat Infidelity in all its 
forms ; that the truth of God and of his message 
admits of a noble and decisive manifestation, 
through every mist which the pride, or the preju- 
dice, or the sophistry of man may throw around 
it ; and elevated as the wisdom of him may be, 
who has ascended the heights of science, and 
poured the light of demonstration over the most 
wondrous of nature's mysteries, that even out of 
his own principles it may be proved, how much 
more elevated is the wisdom of him who sits with 
the docility of a little child to his Bible, and casts 
down 10 its authority all his lofty imagination?}. 



42 THE MODESTY OF TRUE SCIENCE. 

DISCOURSE II. 
THE MODESTY OF TRUE SCIENCE. 



•' And if any man tbink that he knoweth any thing', h« 
knoweth nothing yet as he ought to know." — 1 CoRiNraiAK*, 
viii. a. 

There is much profound and important wisdom in 
that proverb of Solomon, where it is said, that 
" the heart knoweth its own bitterness." It forms 
part of a truth still more comprehensive, that every 
man knoweth his own peculiar feelings, and difli- 
culties, and trials, far better than he can get any 
of his neighbours to perceive them. It is natural 
to us all, that we should desire to engross, to the 
uttermost, the sympathy of others with what is most 
painful to the sensibilities of our own bosom, and 
w ith wbat is most aggravating in the hardships of 
our own situation. But, labour as we may, we 
cannot, with every power of expression, make an 
adequate conveyance, as it were, of all our sensa- 
tions, and of all our circumstances, into another's 
understanding. There is a something in the 
intimacy of a man's own experience, which he cannot 
make to pass entire into the heart and mind even of 
his most familiar companion, — and thus it is, that 
he is so often defeated in his attempts to obtain a 
full and a cordial possession of his sympathy.- He 
is mortified, and he wonders at the obtuseness of 
the people around him — and that he cannot get 



THE MODESTY OF 'J'RUE SCIENCE. 43 

diem to enter into the justness of his complainings 
— nor to feel the point upon which turn the truth 
and the reason of his remonstrances — nor to give 
their interested attention to the case of his pe- 
culiarities and of his wrongs — nor to kindle', in 
generous resentment, along with him, when he 
starts the topic of his indignation. He does not 
reflect, all the while, that, with every human being 
he addresses, there is an inner man, which forms a 
theatre of passions, and of interests as busy, as 
crowded, and as fitted as his own to engross the 
anxious and the exercised feelings of a heart, which 
can alone understand its own bitterness, and lay a 
correct estimate on the burden of its own visitations. 
Every man we meet, carries about with him, in the 
unperceived solitude of his bosom, a little world of 
his own — and we are just as blind, and as insensible, 
and as dull, both of perception and of sympathy, 
about his engrossing objects, as he is about ours ; 
and, did we suffer this observation to have all its 
weight upon us, it might serve to make us more 
candid, and more considerate of others. It might 
serve to abate the monopolizing selfishness of our 
nature. It might serve to soften down all the 
malignity which comes out of those envious con- 
templations that we are so apt to cast on the fancied 
ease and prosperity which are around us. It might 
serve to reconcile every man to his own lot, and 
dispose him to bear, with thankfulness, his own 
burden ; and if this train of sentiment were prose- 
cuted with firmness, and calmness, and impartiality, 
It would lead to the conclusion, that each profession 
in life has its own peculiar pains, and its own 



44 THE MODESTY OF TRUE SCIENCE. 

besetting inconveniences — that, from the very bot- 
tom of society, up to the golden pinnacle which 
blazons upon its summit, there is much in the shape 
of care and of suffering to be found — that, througii- 
out all the conceivable varieties of human condition, 
there are trials, which can neither be adequately 
told on the one side, nor fully understood on the 
other — that the ways of God to man are as equal 
in this, as in every department of his administration 
— and that, go to whatever quarter of human ex- 
perience we may, we shall find that he has provided 
enough to exercise the patience, and to accomplish 
the purposes of a wise and a salutary discipline 
upon all his children. 

I have brought forward this observation, that it 
may prepare the way for a second. There are 
perhaps no two sets of human beings, who com- 
prehend less the movements, and enter less into the 
cares and concerns, of each other, than the wide 
and busy public on the one hand, and, on the other, 
those men of close and studious retirement, whom 
the world never hears of, save when, from their 
thoughtful solitude, there issues forth some spienajQ 
discovery, to set the world on agaze of admiration. 
Then will the brilliancy of a superior genius draw 
every eye towards it — and the homage paid to 
intellectual superiority, will place its idol on a loftier 
eminence than all wealth or than all titles can be- 
stow — and the name of the successful philosoplier 
will circulate, in his own age, over the whole extent 
of civilized society, and be borne down to posterity 
in the characters of ever-during remembrance : and 
thus it is, that, when we look back on the days of 



THE MODESTY OF TRUE SCIENCE. 45 

Newton, we annex a kind of mysterious greatness 
to him, who, by the pure force of his understanding, 
rose to such a gigantic elevation above the level of 
ordinary men — and the kings and warriors of other 
days sink into insignificance around him — and he, 
at this moment, stands forth to the public eye, in a 
prouder array of glory than circles the memory of 
all the men of former generations — and, while all 
the vulgar grandeur of other days is now mouldering 
in forgetfulness, the achievements of our great 
astronomer are still fresh in the veneration of his 
countrymen, and they carry him forward on the 
stream of timcj with a reputation ever gathering, 
and the triumphs of a distinction that will never die. 
Now, the point that I want to impress upon you 
is, that the same public, who are so dazzled and 
overborne by the lustre of all this superiority, are 
utterly in the dark as to what that is which confers 
its chief merit on the philosophy of Newton. They 
see the result of his labours, but they know not 
how to appreciate the difficulty or the extent of 
them. They look on the stately edifice he has 
reared, but they know not what he had to do in 
settling the foundation which gives to it all its sta- 
bility ; nor are they aware what painful encounters 
he had to make, both with the natural predilections 
of his own heart, and with the prejudices of others, 
when employed on the work of laying together its 
unperishing materials. They have never heard of 
the controversies which this man, of peaceful un- 
ambitious modesty, had to sustain with all that w-as 
proud, and all that was intolerant in the philosophy 
of the age. They have never, in thought, entered 



46 THE MODESTY OF TRUE SCIENCE. 

that closet which was the scene of his patient and 
profound exercises — nor have they gone along with 
him, as he gave his silent hours to the labours of 
the midnight oil, and plied that unwearied task, to 
which the charm of lofty contemplation had allured 
him — nor have they accompanied him through all 
the workings of that wonderful mind, from which, as 
from the recesses of a laboratory, there came forth 
such gleams and processes of thought as shed an 
elFulgency over the whole amplitude of nature. All 
this, the public have not done; for of this the great 
majority, even of the reading and cultivated public, 
are utterly incapable ; and therefore is it, that they 
need to be told what that is, in which the main 
distinction of his philosophy lies ; that, when la- 
bouring in other fields of investigation, they may 
know how to borrow from his safe example, and 
how to profit by that superior wisdom which marked 
the whole conduct of his understanding. 

Let it be understood, then, that they are the 
positive discoveries of Newton, which, in the eye 
of a superficial public, confer upon him all his 
reputation. He discovered the mechanism of the 
planetary system. He discovered the composition 
of light. He discovered the cause of those al- 
ternate movements which take place on the waters 
of the ocean. These form his actual and his 
visible achievements. 1 hese are what the world 
look to as the monuments of his greatness. These 
are doctrines by which he has enriched the field of 
philosophy ; and thus it is, that \k\e whole of his 
merit is supposed to lie in having had the sagacity 
to perceive, and the vigour to lay hold of the proofs. 



THE MODESTY OF TRUE SCIENCE. 4 

which conferred upon these doctrines all the 
establishment of a most rigid and conclusive de- 
monstration. 

But, while he gets all his credit, and all his ad- 
miration for those articles of science which he has 
added to the creed of philosophers, he deserves as 
much credit and admiration for those articles which 
he kept out of this creed, as for those which he in- 
ti'oduced into it. It was the property of his mind, 
that it kept a tenacious hold of every one position 
which had proof to substantiate it : but it forms a 
property equally characteristic, and which, in fact, 
gives its leading peculiarity to the whole spirit and 
style of his investigations, that he put a most deter- 
mined exclusion on every one position that was 
destitute of such proof. He would not admit the 
astronomical theories of those who went before him, 
because they had no proof. He would not give in 
to their notions about the planets wheeling their 
rounds in whirlpools of ether — for he did not see 
this ether — he had no proof of its existence : and, 
besides, even supposing it to exist, it would not 
have impressed, on the heavenly bodies, such move- 
ments as met his observation. He would not 
submit his judgment to the reigning systems of the 
day — for, though they had authority to recommend 
them, they had no proof ; and thus it is, that he 
evinced the strength and the soundness of his philo- 
sophy, as much by his decisions upon those doctrines 
of science which he rejected, as by his demonstra- 
tion of those doctrines of science which he was the 
first to propose, and which now stand out to tb« 



48 THE MODESTY OF TRUE SCIENCE. 

eye of pcsteritj^ as the oniy monuments to th* 
force and superiority ot his understanding. 

He wanted no other recommendation for any 
one article of science, than the recommendation of 
evidence — and, with this recommendation, he opened 
to it the chamber of his mind, though authority 
scowled upon it, and taste was disgusted by it, and 
fashion was ashamed of it, and all the beauteous 
speculation of former days was cruelly broken up 
by this new announcement of the better philosophy, 
and scattered like the fragments of an aerial vision, 
over which the past generations of the world had 
been slumbering their profound and their pleasing 
reverie. But, on the other hand, should the article 
of science want the recommendation of evidence, 
he shut against it all the avenues of his under- 
standing — and though all antiquity lent their suffrages 
to it, and all eloquence had thrown around it the 
most attractive brilliancy, and all habit had incor- 
porated it with every system of every seminary in 
Europe, and all fancy had arrayed it in graces of 
the most tempting solicitation ; yet was the steady 
and inflexible mind of Newton proof against this 
whole weight of authority and allurement, and, 
casting his cold and unwelcome look at the specious 
plausibility, he rebuked it from his presence. The 
strength of his philosophy lay as much irx refusing 
admittance to that which wanted evidence, as in 
giving a place and an occupancy to that which 
possessed it. In that march of intellect, which led 
him onwards through the rich and magnificent field 
of his discoveries, he pondered every step ; and, 



THE MODESTY OF TRUE SCIENCK. 49 

while he advanced with a firm and assured raoTe- 
ment, wherever the Ught of evidence carried him, 
he never suffered any glare of imagination or of 
prejudice to seduce him from his path. 

Certain it is, that, in the prosecution of his won- 
derful career, he found himself on a way beset with 
temptation upon every side of him. It was not 
merely that he had the reigning taste and philosophy 
of the times to contend with. But he expatiated on 
a lofty region, where, in all the giddiness of success, 
he might have met with much to solicit his fancy, 
and tempt him to some devious speculation. Had 
he been like the majority of other men, he would 
have broken free from the fetters of a sober and 
chastised understanding, and, giving wmg to his 
imagination, had done what philosophers have 
done after him — been carried away by some meteor 
of their own forming, or found their amusement in 
some of their own intellectual pictures, or palmed 
some loose and confident plausibilities of their own 
'jpoi) ae world. But Newton stood true to his 
principle, that he would take up with nothing which 
wanted evidence, and he kept by his demonstrations, 
and his measurements, and his proofs ; and, if it be 
true that he who ruleth his own spirit is greater 
than he who taketh a city, there was won, in the 
solitude of his chamber, many a repeated victory 
over himself, which should give a brighter lustre to 
his name than all the conquests he has made on the 
field of discovery, or than all the splendour of his 
positive achievements. 

I trust you understand, that, though it be one of 
the maxims of the true philosophy, never to shrink 

VOL. vn. C 



iO Till:; MOLCSTV OF TSIlTI-: SCIE.nC.2, 

from a doctrine which has evidence on its side, it, la 
another maxirn, equally essential to it, never to 
harbour any doctrine when this evidence is wanting. 
Take these two maxims along with you, and you 
will be at no loss to explain the peculiarity, which, 
more than any other, goes both to characterize and 
to ennoble the philosophy of Newton. What I al- 
lude to is, the precious combination of its strength 
and of its modesty. On the one hand, what greater 
evidence of strength than the fulfilment of that 
mighty enterprise, by which the heavens have been 
made its own, and the mechanism of unnumbered 
worlds has been brought within the grasp of the 
human understanding ? Now, it was by walking 
in the light of sound and competent evidence, that 
all this was accomplished. It was by the patient, 
the strenuous, the unfaltering application of the 
legitimate instruments of discovery. It was by 
touching that which was tangible, and looking to 
that which was visible, and computing that which 
was measurable, and, in one word, by making a 
right and a reasonable use of all that proof which 
the field of nature around us has brought within the 
limit of sensible observation. l^his is the arena on 
which the modern philosophy has won all her vic- 
tories, and fidfilled all her wondrous achievements, 
and reared all her proud and enduring monuments, 
and gathered all her magnificent trophies, to that 
power of intellect with which the hand of a bounte- 
ous heaven has so richly gifted the constitution of 
nur species. 

But, on the other hand, go beyond the limits of 
sensible observation, and, from that moment, the 



THE MODESTY OF TRUE SCIEIICE. 

gemiiiie disciples of this enlightened school cast all 
their confidence and all their intrepidity away from 
them. Keep them on the firm ground of experi- 
ment, and none more bold and more decisive in their 
announcements of all that they have evidence for— 
Lilt, off this ground, none more iiumble, or more cau- 
tious of any thing like positive announcements, than 
they. They choose neither to know, nor to believe, nor 
to assert, where evidence is wanting, and they will 
sit, with all the patience of a scholar to his task, till they 
have found it. They are utter strangers to that 
haughty confidence with which some philosophers 
of the day sport the plausibilities of unauthorized 
speculation, and by which, unmindful of the limit 
that separates the region of sense from the region 
of conjecture, they make their blind and their im- 
petuous inroads into a province which does not 
belong to them. There is no one object to which 
the exercised mind of a true Newtonian disciple 
is more familiarized than this limit, and it serves as 
a boundary by v^hich he shapes, and bounds, and 
regulates all the enterprises of his philosophy. All 
the space which lies within this limit, he cultivates 
to the uttermost ; and it is by such successive la- 
bours, that every year which rolls over the world 
is witnessing some new contribution to experimental 
science, and adding to the solidity and aggrandize- 
ment of this wonderful fabric. But, if true to their 
own principle, then, in reference to the forbidden 
ground which lies without this limit, those very men, 
who, on the field of warranted exertion, evinced all the 
hardihood and vigour of a full-grown understanding, 
show, on every subject where the light of evidenco 



52 THE MODESTY OF TRUE SCIENCE. 

is withheld from tiiem, all the modesty of children. 
They give us positive opinion only when they have 
indisputable proof — but, when they have no such 
proof, then they have no such opinion. The single 
principle of their respect to truth, secures their 
homage for every one position where the evidence 
of truth is present, and, at the same time, begets 
an entire diffidence about every one position from 
which this evidence is disjoined. And thus we may 
understand, how the first man in the accomplish- 
ments of philosophy, w hich the world ever saw, sat 
at the book of nature in the humble attitude of its 
interpreter and its pupil — how all the docility of 
conscious ignorance threw a sweet and softening 
lustre around the radiance even of his most splendid 
discoveries : and, while the flippancy of a few su- 
perficial acquirements is enough to place a philo- 
sopher of the day on the pedestal of his fancied 
elevation, and to vest him with an assumed lordship 
over the whole domain of natural and revealed 
knowledge; we cannot forbear to do honour to the 
unpretending greatness of Newton, than whom we 
know not if there ever lighted on the face of our 
world, one in the character of whose admirable 
genius so much force and so much humility were 
more attractively blended. 

I now propose to carry you forward, by a few 
simple illustrations, to the argument of this day. 
All the sublime truths of the modern astronomy lie 
rtithin the field of actual observation, and have the 
drm evidence to rest upon of aii that information 
which is conveyed to us l)y the avenue of the senses. 
Sir Isaac Newton never went beyond this field, 



THE MODESTY Ol' TRUE SCIENCE. 53 

without a reverential impi-ession upon his mind, of 
the precariousness of the ground on which he was 
standing. On this ground he never ventured a 
positive affirmation — but, resigning the lofty tone 
of demonstration, and putting on the modesty of 
conscious ignorance, he brought forward all he had 
to say in the humble form of a doubt, or a conjecture, 
or a question. But what he had not confidence 
to do, other philosophers have done after him — and 
they have winged their audacious way into forbid- 
den regions — and they have crossed that circle by 
which the field of observation is enclosed — and there 
have they debated and dogmatized with ail the pride 
of a most intolerant assurance. 

Now, though the case be imaginary, let us con- 
ceive, for the sake of illustration, th^c one of these 
philosophers made so extravagant a ^leparture from 
the sobriety of experimental science, as to pass on 
from the astronomy of the different planets, and to 
attempt the natural history of tiieir animal and 
vegetable kingdoms. He might get hold of some 
vague and general analogies, to throw an air of 
plausibility around his speculation. He might pass 
from the botany of the different rbgions of the globe 
that we inhabit, and make his loose and confident 
applications to each of the other planets, according 
to its distance from the sun, ana the inclination of 
its axis to the plane of its annual revolution ; and 
out of some such slender materials, he may work 
up an amusing philosophical romance, full of ingen- 
uity, and having, withal, the colour of truth and of 
consistency spread over it. 

I can conceive how a superfi '.iai public might be 



54 THE MODESTY OF TRUE SCIENCE. 

delighted by the eloquence of such a compositioE, 
and even be impressed by its arguments ; but were 
I asked, which is the man of all the ages and 
countries in the world, who would have the least 
respect for this treatise upon the plants which grow- 
on the surface of Jupiter, I should be at no loss to 
answer the question. I should say, that it would 
be he who had computed the motions of Jupiter — . 
that it would be he who had measured the bulk and 
the density of Jupiter — that it would be he who had 
estimated the periods of Jupiter — that it would be he 
whose observant eye and patiently calculating mind, 
had traced the satellites of Jupiter through all the 
rounds of their mazy circulation, and unravelled the 
intricacy of all their movements. He would see at 
once that the subject lay at a hopeless distance 
beyond the field of legitimate observation. It would 
be quite enough for him, that it was beyond the 
range of his telescope. On this ground, and on this 
ground only, would he reject it as one of the puniest 
imbecilities of childhood. As to any character of 
truth or of importance, it would have no more effect 
on such a mind as that of Newton, than any illusion 
of poetry ; and from the eminence of his intellectual 
throne, would he cast a penetrating glance at the 
whole speculation, and bid its gaudy insignificance 
away from him. 

But let us pass onward to another case, which, 
though as imj^ginary as the former, may still serve 
the purpose of illustration. 

This same adventurous philosopher may be con- 
ceived to shift his speculation from the plants of 
another w^irld, to the character of its inhabitania 



THE MODESTY OF TRUE SCIENCE. 0.-» 

fie may avail himself of some slender correspond, 
encies between the heat of the sun and the moral 
temperament of the people it shines upon. He 
may work up a theory, which carries on the front 
of it some of the characters of plausibility ; but 
surely it does not require the philosophy of Newton 
to demonstrate the folly of such an enterprise. 
There is not a man of plain understanding, who does 
not perceive that this ambitious inquirer has got 
without his reach — that he has stepped beyond the 
field of experience, and is now expatiating on the 
field, of imagination — that he has ventured on a dark 
unknown, where the wisest of all philosophy is the 
philosophy of silence, and a profession of ignorance 
is the best evidence of a solid understanding — that 
if he think he knows any thing on such a subject 
as this, " he knoweth nothing yet as he ought to 
know." He knows not what Newton knew, and 
what he kept a steady eye upon throughout tht. 
whole march of his sublime investigations. He 
knows not the limit of his own faculties. He has 
overleaped the barrier which hems in all the pos- 
sibilities of human attainment. He has wantonly 
flung himself off from the safe and firm field of ob~ 
servation, and got on that undiscoverable ground, 
where, by every step he takes, he widens his dis- 
tance from the true philosophy, and by every 
affirmation he utters, he rebels against the authority 
oi all its maxims. 

I can conceive it to be your feeling, that I have 
hitherto indulged in a vain expense of argument, 
and it is most natural for you to put the question, 
* What is the precise point of convergence to which 



56 THE MODESTY OF TRUE SCIENCE. 

I am directing all the light of this abundant and 
seemingly superfluous illustration ?' 

In the astronomical objection which Infidelity 
has proposed against the truth of the Christian 
revelation, there is first an assec-tion, and then an 
argument. The assertion is, that Christianity ig 
set up for the exclusive benefit of our minute 
and solitary world. The argument is, that God 
would not lavish such a quantity of attention on so 
insignificant a field. Even though the assertion 
were admitted, I should have a quarrel with the 
argument. But the futility of the objection is not 
laid open in all its extent, unless we expose the 
utter want of all essential evidence even for the 
truth of the assertion. How do infidels know that 
Christianity is set up for the single benefit of this 
earth and its inhabitants ? How are they able to 
tell us, that if you go to other planets, the person 
and the religion of Jesus are there unknown to 
them ? We challenge them to the proof of tiiis 
announcement. We see in this objection the same 
rash and gratuitous procedure, which was so ap- 
parent in the two cases that we have already 
advanced for the purpose of illustration. We see 
in it the same glaring transgression on the spirit 
and the maxims of that very philosophy which they 
profess to idolize. 'J hey have made their argument 
against us, out of an assertion which has positively 
no ascertained fact to rest upon — an assertion which 
they have no means whatever of verifying — an 
assertion, the truth or the falsehood of which car 
only be gathered out of some supernatural message, 
for it lies completely beyond the range of human 



THE MODESTY OF TRUE SCIENCE. 67 

observation. It is willingly admitted, that by an 
attempt at the botany of other worlds, the tru.g 
method of philosophizing is trampled on ; for this 
is a subject that lies beyond the range of actual 
observation, and every performance upon it must be 
made up of assertions without proofs. It is also 
willingly admitted, that an attempt at the civil and 
political history of their people, would be an equally 
extravagant departure from the spirit of the true 
philosophy ; for this also lies beyond the field of 
actual observation ; and all that could possibly be 
mustered up on such a subject as this, would still 
be assertions without proofs. Now, the theology 
of these planets is, in every way, as inaccessible a 
subject as their politics or their natural history ; 
and therefore it is, that the objection, grounded on 
the confident assumption of those infidel astronomers, 
who assert Christianity to be the religion of this 
one world, or that the religion of these other worlds 
is not our very Christianity, can have no influence 
on a mind that has derived its habits of thinking, 
from the pure and rigorous school of Newton ; for 
the whole of this assertion is just as glaringly de*. 
titute of proof, as in the two former instances. 

The man who could embark in an enterprise so 
foolish and so fanciful, as to theorize on the details 
of the botany of another world, or to theorize on 
the natural and moral history of its people, is just 
making as outrageous a departure from all sense, 
and all science, and all sobriety, when he presumes 
to speculate, or to assert on the details or the 
methods of God's administration among its rational 
and accountable inhabitants. He wings his fancy 
c2 



58 THE MODESTY OF TRUE SCIENCE. 

to as hazardous a region, and vainly strives a 
penetrating vision through the mantle of as deep 
an obscurity. All the elements of such a specu- 
lation are hidden from him. For any thing he cau 
tell, sin has found its way into these other worlds. 
For any thing he can tell, their people have banished 
themselves from communion with God. For any 
thing he can tell, many a visit has been made to 
each of them, on the subject of our commcn 
Christianity, by commissioned messengers from the 
throne of the Eternal. For any thing he can tell, 
the redemption proclaimed to us is not one solitary 
instance, or not the whole of that redemption which 
is by the Son of God — but only our part in a plan 
of mercy, equal in magnificence to all that astron- 
omy has brought within the range of human 
contemplation. For any thing he can tell, the 
moral pestilence, which walks abroad over the face 
of our world, may have spread its desolations over 
all the planets of all the systems which the telescope 
has made known to us. For any thing he can tell, 
some mighty redemption has been devised in heaven, 
to meet this disaster in the whole extent and ma- 
lignity of its visitations. For any thing he can tell, 
the wonder-working God, who has strewed the field 
of immensity with so many worlds, and spread the 
shelter of His omnipotence over them, may have 
sent a message of love to each, and re-assured th^ 
hearts of its despairing people by some overpower- 
ing manifestation of tenderness. For any thing 
he can tell, angels from paradise may have sped to 
every planet their delegated way, and sung, frona 
•»ch a^ure canopy, a joyful annunciation, and said. 



THE MODESTY OF TRUE SCIENCE. 59 

** Peace be to this residence, and good-will to all 
its families, and glory to Him in the highest, who, 
from the eminency of his thi'one, has issued an act 
of grace so magnificent, as to carry the tidings of 
life and of acceptance to the unnumbered orbs of 
a sinful creation." For any thing he can tell, the 
Eternal Son, of whom it is said, that by Him the 
worlds were created, may have had the government 
of many sinful worlds laid upon His shoulders; and 
by the power of His mysterious word, have awoke 
them all from that spiritual death, to which they 
had sunk in lethargy as profound as the slumbers 
of non-existence. For any thing he can tell, the 
one Spirit who moved on the face of the waters, 
and whose presiding influence it was that hushed 
the wild war of nature's elements, and made a 
beauteous system emerge out of its disjointed 
materials, may now be working with the fragments 
of another chaos; and educing order, and obedience, 
and harmony, out of the wrecks of a moral rebellion, 
which reaches through all these spheres, and 
spreads disorder to the uttermost limits of our 
astronomy. 

But here I stop — nor shall I attempt to grope 
further my dark and fatiguing way, among such 
sublime and mysterious secrecies. It is not I who 
am offering to lift this curtain. It is not I who 
am pitching ray adventurous flight to the secret 
things which belong to God, away from the things 
that are revealed, and which belong to us, and to 
our children. It is the champion of that very Infi- 
delity which I am now combating. It is he who 
props his unchristian argument, by presumptsena 



60 THE MODESTY OF TRUE SCIENCE. 

fetched out of those untravelled obscurities which 
lie on the other side of a barrier that I pronounce 
to be impassable. It is he who trangresses tha 
limits which Newton forbore to enter ; because, 
with a justness which reigns throughout all his in- 
quiries, he saw the limit of his own understanding, 
nor would he venture himself beyond it. It is he 
who has borrowed from the philosophy of this 
wondrous man a few dazzling conceptions, which 
have only served to bewilder him — while, an utter 
stranger to the spirit of this philosophy, he has 
carried a daring and an ignorant speculation far 
beyond the boundary of its prescribed and allowable 
enterprises. It is he who has mustered against 
tlie truths of the Gospel, resting as it does on 
evidence within the reach of his faculties, an 
objection, for the truth of which he has no evidence 
whatever. It is he who puts away from him a 
doctrine, for which he has the substantial and the 
familiar proof of human testimony ; and substitutes 
in its place, a doctrine, for which he can get no 
other support than from a reverie of his own im- 
agination. It is he who turns aside from all that 
safe and certain argument, that is supplied by the 
history of this world, of which he knows something ; 
and who loses himself in the work of theorizing 
about other worlds, of the moral and theological 
history of which he positively knows nothing. 
Upon him, and not upon us, lies the folly of 
launching his impetuous way beyond the province 
of observation — of letting his fancy afloat among 
the unknown of distant and mysterious regions — 
and, by an act cf daring, as impious as it i? 



THE MODESTY OF TRUE SCIENCE. Qi 

unphilosophical. of trying to unwrap that shroud, 
which, till di-awn aside by the hand of a messenger 
from heaven, will ever veil, from human eye, the 
purposes of the Eternal. 

If you have gone along with us in the preceding 
observations, you will perceive how they are cal- 
culated to disarm of all its point, and of all its 
energy, that flippancy of Voltaire ; when, in the 
examples he gives of the dotage of the human un- 
derstanding, he tells us of Bacon having believed 
in witchcraft, and Sir Isaac Newton having writ- 
ten a commentary on the Book of Revelation. 
The former instance we shall not undertake to 
vindicate ; but, in the latter instance, we perceive 
what this brilliant and specious, but withal super- 
ficial apostle of Infidelity, either did not see, or 
refused to acknowledge. We see in this intellec- 
tual labour of our great philosopher, the working 
of the vei-y same principles which carried him 
through the profoundest and the most successful 
of his investigations ; and how he kept most sa- 
credly and most consistently by those very maxims, 
the authority of which, he, even in the full vigour 
and manhood of his faculties, ever recognized. 
We see in the theology of Newton, the very spirit 
and principle which gave all its stability, and all 
its sureness, to the philosophy of Newton. We 
see the same tenacious adherence to every one 
doctrine, that had such valid proof to uphold it, as 
could be gathered from the field of human expe- 
rience ; and we see the same firm resistance of 
every one argument, that had nothing to recom- 
mend it, but such plausibilities as could easily be 



62 TUE MODESTV OF TRUE SCIENCE. 

devised by the genius of man, when he expatiated 
abroad on those fields of creation which the eye 
never witnessed, and from which no messenger ever 
came to us with any credible information. Now, 
it was on the former of these two principles that 
Newton clung so determinedly to his Bible, as the 
record of an actual annunciation from God to the 
inhabitants of this world. When he turned his 
attention to this book, he came to it with a mind 
tutored to the philosophy of facts — and when he 
looked at its credentials, he saw the stamp and the 
impress of this philosophy on every one of them. 
He sasv the fact of Christ being a messenger from 
heaven, in the audible language by which it was 
conveyed from heaven's canopy to human ears. 
He saw the fact of his being an approved ambas- 
sador of God, in those miracles which carried their 
own resistless evidence along with them to human 
eyes. He saw the truth of this whole history 
brought home to his own conviction, by a sound 
and substantial vehicle of human testimony. He 
saw the reality of that supernatural light, which 
inspired the prophecies he himself illustrated, by 
such an agreement with the events of a various 
and distant futurity as could be taken cognizance 
of by human observation. He saw the wisdom of 
God pervading the whole substance of the written 
message, in such manifold adaptations to the cir- 
cumstances of man, and to the whole secrecy of 
his thoughts, and his affections, and his spiritual 
wants, and his moral sensibilities, as even in the 
mmd of an ordinary and unlettered peasant, can 
be /ittestod by human consciousness. These form- 



THE MODESTY OF TRUE SCIENCE. 63 

ed tlie solid materials of the basis on which our 
experimental philosopher stood; and there was 
nothing in the whole compass of his own astronomy, 
to dazzle him away from it; and he was too well 
aware of the limit between what he knew, and 
what he did not know, to be seduced from the 
ground he had taken, by any of those brilliancies, 
which have since led so many of his humbler suc- 
cessors into the track of Infidelity. He had mea- 
sured the distances of these planets. He had cal- 
culated their periods. He had estimated their 
figures, and their bulk, and their densities, and he 
had subordinated the whole intricacy of their move- 
ments to the simple and sublime agency of one 
commanding principle. But he had too much of 
the ballast of a substantial understanding about 
him, to be thrown afloat by air this success among 
the plausibilities of wanton and unauthorized spe- 
culation. He knew the boundary which hemmed 
him. He knew that he had not thrown one par- 
ticle of light on the moral or religious history of 
these planetary regions. He had not ascertained 
what visits of communication they received from 
the God who upholds them. But he knew that 
the fact of a real visit made to this planet, had 
such evidence to rest upon, that it was not to be 
disposted by any aerial imagination. And when 
I look at the steady and unmoved Christianity of 
this wonderftd man ; so far from seeing any symp- 
tom of dotage and imbecility, or any forgetfulness 
of those principles on which the fabric of his phi- 
losophy is reared ; do I see, that in sitting down 
to the work of a Bible commentator, he hath given 



64 THE MODESTY OI TRUE SCIENCE, 

US their most beautiful and most consistent 
t-x.r;mplification. 

I did not anticipate such a length of time, and 
of illustration, m this stage of my argument. But 
I will not regret it, if I have familiarized the minds 
of any of my readers to the reigning principle of 
this Discourse. We are strongly disposed to think, 
that it is a principle w hich might be made to apply 
to every argument of every unbeliever--and so to 
serve not merely as an antidote against the Infi- 
delity of astronomers, but to serve as an antidote 
against all Infidelity. We are all aware of the 
diversity of complexion which Infidelity puts on. 
It looks one thing in the man of science and of 
liberal accomplishment. It looks another thing 
in the refined voluptuary. It looks still another 
thing in the common-place railer against the arti- 
fices of priesth domination. It looks another thing 
in the dark and unsettled spirit of him^ whose every 
reflection is tinctured with gall, and who casts his 
envious and malignant scowl at all that stands 
associated with the established order of society. 
It looks another thing in the prosperous man of 
business, who has neither time nor patience for 
the details of the Christian evidence — but who, 
amid the hurry of his other occupations, has gath- 
ered as many of the lighter petulancies of the in- 
fidel writers, and ta:ight from the perusal of them, 
as contemptuous a tone towards the religion of 
the New Testament^ as to set him at large from 
all the decencies ot rdifrious observation, and to 
give him the disdain of an elevated complacency 
over all the follies of vi'hi^t L3 counts a ^uluar su- 



THE MODESTY OF TRUE SCIENCE. 63 

f^rstition. And, lastly, for Infidelity has now got 
down amongst us to the humblest walks of life , 
may it occasionally be seen louring on the forehead 
of the resolute and hardy artificer, who can lift his 
menacing voice against the priesthood, and, look- 
ing on the Bible as a jugglery of theirs, can bid 
stout defiance to all its denunciations. Now, under 
all these varieties, we think that there might be 
detected the one and universal principle which we 
have attempted to expose. The something, what- 
ever it is, which has dispossessed all these people 
of their Christianity, exists in their minds, in the 
shape of a position, which they hold to be true, 
but which, by no legitimate evidence, they have 
ever realized — and a position, which lodges within 
them as a wilful fancy or presumption of their own, 
but which could not stand the touchstone of that 
wise and solid principle, in virtue of which the fol- 
lowers of Newton give to observation the prece- 
dence over theory. It is a principle altogether 
worthy of being laboured — as, if carried round in 
faithful and consistent application amongst these 
numerous varieties, it is able to break up all the 
existing Infidelity of the world. 

Bat there is one other most important; conclu- 
sion to which it carries us. It carries us, with all 
the docility of children, to the Bible ; and puts us 
down into the attitude of an unreserved surrender 
of thought and understanding, to its authoritative 
information , Without the testimony of an authen- 
tic messenger from Heaven, I know nothing of 
Heaven's counsels. I never heard of any moral 
ttslescope that can bring to my observation the 



66 THE MODESTY OF TRUE SCIENCE. 

doings or the deliberations which are taking placa 
in the sanctuary of the Eternal. I may put into 
the registers of my belief, all that comes home to 
me through the senses of the outer man, or by the 
consciousness of the inner man. But neither the 
one nor the other can tell me of the purposes of 
God ; can tell me of the transactions or the designs 
of His sublime monarchy ; can tell me of the go- 
ings forth of Him who is from everlasting unto 
everlasting ; can tell me of the march and the 
movements of that great administration which em- 
braces all worlds, and takes into its wide and com- 
prehensive survey the mighty roll of innumerable 
ages. It is true that my fancy may break its im- 
petuous way into this lofty and inaccessible field ; 
and, through the devices of my heart, which are 
many, the visions of an ever-shifting theology may 
take their alternate sway over me ; but the coun- 
sel of the Lord, it shall stand. And I repeat it, 
that if true to the leading principle of that philo- 
sophy, which has poured such a flood of light over 
the mysteries of nature, we shall dismiss every 
self-formed conception of our own, and wait, in 
hU the humility of conscious ignorance, till the 
Lord himself shah break His silence, and make 
His counsel known, by an act of communication. 
And now, that a p/ofessed communication is be- 
fore me, and that it has all the solidity of the ex- 
perimental evidence on its side, and nothing but 
the reveries of a dai'ing speculation to oppose it, 
what is the consistent, what is the rational, what 
is the philosophical use that should be made of 
this document, but to set me down like a school- 



THE MODESTY OF TRUE SCIENCE. 61 

boy, to the work of turning its pages, and conning 
its lessons, and submitting the every exercise of 
my judgment to its information and its testimony ? 
We know that there is a superficial philosophy, 
which casts the glare of a most seducing brilliancy 
around it ; and spurns the Bible, with all the doc- 
trine, and all the piety of the Bible, away from it; 
and has infused the spirit of Antichrist into many 
of the literary establishments of the age ; but it is 
not the solid, the profound, the cautious spirit of 
that philosophy, which has done so much to e-n- 
noble the modern period of our world ; for the 
more that this spirit is cultivated and understood, 
the more will it be found in alliance with that 
spirit, in virtue of which all that exalteth itself 
against the knowledge of God is humbled, and ail 
lofty imaginations are cast down, and every thought 
of the heart is brought into the captivity of the 
obedience of Christ. 



68 



THE EXTENT OF THE 



DISCOURSE III. 

ON THE EXTENT OF THE DIVINB 
CONDESCENSION. 



' \7\\o is like unto the Lord our God, who dwelleth on 
high ; who humbleth himself to behold the things that 
ara in heaven, and in the earth!" — Psalm cxiii. 5, 6. 

In our last Discourse, we attempted to expose the 
total want of evidence for the assertion of the infidel 
astronomer — and this reduces the whole of our 
remaining controversy with him, to the business of 
arguing against a mere possibility. Still, however, 
the answer is not so complete as it might be, till 
^he soundness of the argument be attended to, as 
well as the credibility of the assertion — or,' in other 
words, let us admit the assertion, and take a view of 
the reasoning which has been constructed upon it. 
We have already attempted to lay before you 
the wonderful extent of that space, teeming with 
unnumbered worlds, which modern science has 
brought within the circle of its discoveries. Wa 
even ventured to expatiate on those tracts of infinity, 
which lie on the other side of all that eye or that 
telescope hath made known to us — to shoot afar 
mto those ulterior regions, which are beyond the 
limits of our astronomy — to impress you with the 
rashness of the imagination, that the creative energy 
of God had sunk exhausted by the magnitude of 
its efforts, at that very line, through which the art 



DIVINE CONDESCENSION. 69 

of man, lavished as it has been on the work of 
perfecting the iusiruments of vision, has not yet 
been able to penetrate ; and upon all this we 
liazarded the assertion, that though all these visible 
heavens were to rush into annihilation, and the besom 
of the Almighty's wrath were to sweep from the face 
of the universe, those millions, and millions more 
of suns and of systems, which lie within the grasp 
of our actual observation — that this event, which, 
to our eye, would leave so wide and so dismal a 
solitude behind it, might be nothing in the eye of 
Him who could take in the whole, but the disao- 
pearance of a little speck from that field of createa 
things, which the hand of His omnipotence had 
thrown around him. 

But to press' home the sentiment of the text, it 
is not necessary to stretch the imagination beyond 
the limit of our actual discoveries. It is enough 
to strike our minds with the insignificance of this 
world, and of all who inhabit it, to bring it into 
measurement with that mighty assemblage of worlds 
which lie open to the eye of man, aided as it has 
been by the inventions of his genius. When we 
told you of the eighty millions of suns, each oc- 
cupying his own independent territory in space, 
and dispensing his own influences over a cluster of 
tributary worlds ; this world could not fail to sink 
into littleness in the eye of him, who looked to all 
the magnitude and variety which are around it. 
We gave you but a feeble image of our comparative 
insignificance, when we said, that the glories of an 
extended forest would suffer no more from the fall 
of a single leaf, than the glories of this extended 



70 THE EXTENT OF THE 

universe would suffer, though the globe we tread 
upon, " and all that it inherit, should dissolve." 
And when we lift our conceptions to Him who has 
peopled immensity with all these wonders — Who 
sits enthroned on the magnificence of His own 
works, and by one sublime idea can embrace the 
whole extent of that boundless amplitude, which 
He has filled with the trophies of His divinity ; we 
cannot but resign our whole heart to the Psalmist's 
exclamation of " What is man, that thou art mindful 
of him ; or the son of man, that thou shouldst deign 
to visit him !" 

Now, mark the use to which all this has been 
turned by the genius of Infidelity. Such an humble 
portion of the universe as ours, could never have 
been the object of such high and distinguishing 
attentions as Christianity has assigned to it. God 
would not have manifested Himself in the flesh for 
the salvation of so paltry a world. The monarch 
of a whole continent would never move from his 
capital ; and lay aside the splendour of royalty ; 
and subject himself for months, or for years, to 
perils, and poverty, and persecution ; and take up 
his abode in some small islet of his dominions, which, 
though swallowed by an earthquake, could not be 
missed amid the glories of so wide an empire ; and 
all this to regain the lost aff^ections of a few families 
upon its surface. And neither would the eternal 
Son of God — He who is revealed to us as having 
made all worlds, and as holding an empire, amid 
the spl-endours of which, the globe that we inherit 
is shaded in insignificance ; neither would He strip 
Himself of the glory He had with the Father before 



IJIVINE CONOllSCENSION. 71 

the world was, and ligl^t on this lower scene for 
the purpose imputed to Him in the New Testament, 
Impossible, that the concerns of this puny ball, 
which floats its little round among an infinity of 
larger worlds, should be of such mighty account in 
the plans of the Eternal, or should have given birth 
m heaven to so wonderful a movement, as the Son 
of God putting on the form of our degraded species, 
and sojourning amongst us, and sharing in all our 
infirmities, and crowning the whole scene of hu- 
miliation by the disgrace and the agonies of a cruel 
martyrdom. 

This has been started as a difficulty in the way 
of theChristian Revelation; and it is the boast of 
many of our philosophical Infidels, that, by the light 
of modern discovery, the light of the New Testa- 
ment is eclipsed and overborne ; and the mischief 
is not confined to philosophers, for the argument has 
got into other hands, and the popular illustrations 
that are now given to the sublimest truths of science, 
have widely disseminated all the Deism that has 
been grafted upon it ; and the high tone of a decided 
contempt for the Gospel is now associated with the 
flippancy of superficial accquirements ; and, while 
the venerable Newton, whose genius threw open 
those mighty fields of contemplation, found a fit 
exercise for his powers in the interp'-etation of the 
Bible, there are thousands and tens of thousands, 
who, though walking in the light which he holds out 
to them, are seduced by a complacency which he 
never felt, and inflated by a pride which never 
entered into his pious and philosophical bosom, and 



72 THE EXTENT OF THE 

whorie only notice of the Bible is to depreciate, and 
to deride, and to disown it. 

Before entering into what M'e conceive to be the 
rig-ht answer to this objection, let us previously 
observe, that it goes to strip the Deity of an 
attribute, which forms a wonderful addition to the 
glories of his incomprehensible character. It is 
indeed a mighty evidence of the strength of His 
arm, that so many millions of worlds are suspended 
on it ; but it would surely make the high attribute of 
His power more illustrious, if, while it expatiated at 
large among the suns and the systems of astronomy, 
it could, at the very same instant, be impressing a 
movement and a direction on all the minuter wheels 
of that machinery which is working incessantly 
around us. It forms a noble demonstration of His 
wisdom, that He gives unremitting operation to 
those laws wjjich uphold the. stability of this great 
universe ; but it would go to heighten that wisdom 
inconceivably, if, while equal to the magnificent 
task of maintaining the order and harmony of the 
spheres, it was lavishing its inexhaustible resources 
on the beauties, and varieties, and arrangements, 
of every one scene, however humble, of every one 
field, however narrow, of the creation He had 
formed. It is a cheering evidence of the delight 
He takes in communicating happiness, that the 
whole of immensity should be so strewed with the 
habitations of life and of intelligence ; but it would 
surely bring home the evidence, with a nearer and 
a more affecting impression, to every bosom, did 
we know, that at the very time His benignant regard 



DIVINE CONDESCENSION. 73 

took in the mighty circle of created beings, there 
was not a single family overlooked by Him, and 
chat every individual in every corner of his do- 
minions, was as effectually seen to, as if the object of 
an exclusive and undivided care. It is our imperfec- 
tion, that we cannot give our attention to more than 
one object, at one and the same instant of time; but 
surely it would elevate our every idea of the per- 
fections of God, did we know, that while his 
comprehensive mind could grasp the whole amplitude 
of nature, to the very outermost of its boundaries, 
He had an attentive eye fastened on the very 
humblest of its objects, and pondered every thought 
of my heart, and noticed every footstep of my 
goings, and treasured up in His remembrance every 
turn and every movement of my history. 

And, lastly, to apply this train of sentiment to 
t he matter before us; let us suppose that one among 
(he countless myriads of worlds, should be visited 
I ty a moral pestilence, which spread through all its 
eople, and brought them under the doom of a law, 
hose sanctions were unrelenting and immutable , 
. were no disparagement to God, should He, by 
n act of righteous indignation, sweep this offence 
u.»vay from the universe which it deformed — nor 
should we wonder, though, among the multitude of 
other worlds, from which the ear of the Almighty 
was regaled with the songs of praise, and the in- 
cense of a pure adoration ascended to His throne, 
He should leave the strayed and solitary world to 
perish in the guilt of its rebellion. But, v;ould it 
net throw the softening of a most exquisite tender- 
ness over the character of God, should we see H\m 

VOL. VII. D 



74 THE EXTENT OF THE 

putting forth Hia every expedient to reclaim to 
Himself those children who had wandered away 
from Him — and, few as they were when compared 
with the host of His obedient worshippers, would 
It not just impart to his attribute of compas- 
sion the infinity of the Godhead, that, rather than 
lose the single world which had turned to its own 
way, He should send the messengers of peace to 
woo and to welcome it back again ; and, if justice 
demanded so mighty a sacrifice, and the law be- 
hoved to be so magnified and made honourable, 
would it not throw a moral sublime over the good- 
ness of the Deity, should He lay upon His own 
Son the burden of its atonement, that He might 
again smile upon the world, and hold out the 
sceptre of invitation to all its families ? 

We avow it, therefore, that this infidel argument 
goes to expunge a perfection from the character of 
God. The more we know of the extent of nature, 
should not we have the loftier conception of Him 
who sits in high authority over the concerns of so 
wide a universe ? But is it not adding to the bright 
catalogue of His other attributes, to say, that, while 
magnitude does not overpower Him, minuteness 
cannot escape Him, and vir^-ty cannot bewilder 
Him ; and that, at the very time while the mind of 
the Deity is abroad over the whole vastness of 
creation, there is not one particle of matter, there 
is not one individual principle of rational or of an- 
imal existence, there is not one single world in that 
expanse which teems with them, that His eye does 
oot discern as constantly, and His hand does not 
goide as unerringly, and His Spirit does not watch 



DIVINE CONDESCENSION. 75 

and caro for as vigilantly, as if it formed the one 
and exclusive object of His attention ? 

The thing is inconceivable to us, whose minds 
are so easily distracted by a number of object?, and 
this is the secret principle of the whole Infidelity I 
am now alluding to. To bring God to the level 
of our own comprehension, we would clothe him 
in the impotency of a man. We would transfer 
to his wonderful mind all the imperfection of our 
own faculties. When we are taught by astronomy, 
that He has millions of worlds to look after, and 
thus add in one direction to the glories of His 
character ; we take away from them in another, by 
saying, that each of these worlds must be looked 
after imperfectly. The use that we make of a 
discovery, which should heighten our every concep- 
tion of God, and humble us into the sentiment, 
that a Being of such mysterious elevation is to us 
unfathomable, is to sit in judgment over Him, and 
to pronounce such a judgment as degrades 
Him, and keeps Him down to the standard of our 
own paltry imagination ! We are introduced by 
modern science to a multitude of other suns and of 
other systems ; and the perverse interpretation we put 
upon the fact, that God can diffuse the benefits of 
His power and of His goodness over such a variety 
of worlds, is, that He cannot, or will not, bestow so 
much goodness on one of those worlds, as a professed 
revelation from Heaven has announced to us. While 
we enlarge the provinces of His empii-e, we tarnish 
all the glory of this enlargement, by saying, He has 
so much to care for, that the care of every one 
province must be less complete, and less vigilant, 



76 THE EXTENT OF THE 

ami less effectual, than it would otherwise have been 
By the discoveries of modern science, we multiply 
the places of the creation ; but along with this, we 
would impair the attribute of His eye being in every 
place to behold the evil and the good ; and thus, 
while we magnify one of His perfections, we do if 
at the expense of another; and, to bring Him within 
the grasp of our feeble capacity, we would deface 
one of the glories of that character, which it is our 
part to adore, as higher than all thought, and as 
greater than all comprehension. 

The objection we are discussing, I shall state 
again in a single sentence. Since astronomy has 
unfolded tons such a number of worlds, it is not likely 
that God would pay so much attention to this one 
world, and set up such wonderful provisions for its 
benefit, as are announced to us in the Christian 
Revelation. This objection will have received its 
answer, if we can meet it by the following position : 
— that God, in addition to the bare faculty of dwell- 
ing on a multiplicity of objects at one and the same 
time, has this faculty in such wonderful perfection, 
that He can attend as fully, and provide as richly, 
and manifest all His attributes as illustriously, on 
every one of these objects, as if the rest had no 
existence, and no place whatever in His government 
or in His thoughts. 

For the evidence of this position, we appeal, in 
the first place, to the personal history of each in- 
dividual among you. Only grant us, that God 
never loses sight of any one thing He has created, 
and that no created thing can continue either to 1)6, 
or to act independently of Hira ; and then, even 



DIVINE COND^ESCENSION. Ti 

upon the face of this world, humble as it is on the 
greaf scale of astronomy, how widely diversified, 
and how multiplied into many thousand distinct 
exercises, is the attention of God I His eye is 
upon every hour of my existence. His spirit is 
intimately present with every thought of my heart. 
His inspiration gives birth to every purpose within 
me. His hand impresses a direction on every 
footstep of my goings. Every breath I inhale, is 
drawn by an energy which God deals out to me. 
This body, which, upon the slightest derangement, 
would become the prey of death, or of woful sulF- 
ering, is now at ease, because He at this moment 
is warding off from me a thousand dangers, and 
upholding the thousand movements of its complex 
and delicate machinery. His presiding influence 
keeps by me through the whole current of my rest- 
less and everchanging history. When I walk by 
the wayside, He is along with me. When I enter 
itito company, amid all my forgetfulness of Him, 
He never forgets me. In the silent watches of the 
night, when my eyelids have closed, and my spirit 
has sunk into unconsciousness, the observant eye 
of Him who never slumbers is upon me. I cannot 
fly from his presence. Go where I will, He tends 
me, and watches me, and cares for me ; and the 
same Being who is now at woi-k in the remotest do- 
mains of Nature and of Providence, is also at my 
right hand to eke out to me every moment of my 
being, and to uphold me in the exercise of all my 
feelings, and of all my faculties. 

Now, what God is doing with me, He is doing 
with every distinct individual of this world's popu- 



78 THE EXTENT OF THE 

l.ition. The intimacy of His presence, and attetH 
tion, and care, reaches to one and to all of them. 
With a mind unburdened by the vastness of all its 
other concerns, He can prosecute, without distrac- 
tion, the government and guardianship of every 
one son and daughter of the species. And is it 
for us, in the face of all this experience, ungrate- 
ftdly to draw a limit around the perfections of God 
— to aver, that .the multitude of other worlds has 
withdrawn any portion of His benevolence from 
tlie one we occupy — or that He, whose eye is upon 
every separate family of the earth, would not lavish 
all the riches of His unsearchable attributes on 
some high plan of pardon and immortality, in be- 
half of its countless generations ? 

But, secondly, weve the mind of God so fatigued, 
and so occupied with the care of other worlds, as 
the objection presumes Him to be, should we not 
see some traces of neglect, or of carelessness, in 
His management of ours? Should we not behold, 
in many a field of observation, the evidence of its 
master being over-crowded with the variety of His 
other engagements ? A man oppressed by a mul- 
titude of business, would simplify and reduce the 
work of any new concern that was devolved upon 
him. Now, point out a single mark of God being 
thus oppressed. Astronomy has laid open to us 
so many realms of creation, which were before un- 
heard of, that the world we inhabit shrinks into 
one remote and solitai-y province of His wide 
monarchy. Tell us then, if, in any one field of 
this province which man has access to, you witness 
a single indication of God sparing Himself— of 



DIVINE CONDESCENSION. 79 

God reduced to languor by the weight of His 
other employments — of God sinking under the 
burden of that vast superintendance which lies 
upon Him — of God being exhausted, as one of our- 
selves would be, by any number of concerns, how- 
ever great, by any variety of them, however man- 
ifold ; and do you not perceive, in that mighty 
profusion of wisdom and of goodness, which is 
scattered every where around us, that the thoughts 
of this unsearchable Being are not as our thoughts, 
nor his ways as our ways ? 

My time does not suffer me to dwell on this 
topic, because, before I conclude, I must hasten 
to another illustration. But when I look abroad 
on the wondrous scene that is immediately before 
me — and see, that in every direction it is a scene 
of the most various and unwearied activity — and 
expatiate on all the beauties of that garniture by 
which it is adorned, and on all the prints of design 
and of benevolence which abound in it — and think, 
that the same God who holds the universe, with its 
every system, in the hollow of His hand, pencils 
every fiower, and gives nourishment to every blade 
of grass, and actuates the movements of every liv- 
ing thing, and is not disabled, by the weight of 
His other cares, from enriching the humble depart- 
ment of nature I occupy, with charms and accom- 
modations of the most unbounded variety — then, 
surely, if a message, bearing every mark of authen- 
ticity, should profess to come to me from God, 
and inform me of his mighty doings for tiie happi- 
ness of our species, it is not for me. in the face of 
«11 this evidence, to reject it as a tale of imposture, 



80 THE EXTENT OF THE 

because astronomers have told me timi lie has so 
many other worlds and other orders ol beings to 
attend to, — and, wlien 1 think that it were a depo- 
t;ition of Him from his supremacy over the crea- 
tures he has formed, should a single sparrow fall 
ro tlie ground without His appointment, then let 
jsfience and sophistry try to cheat me of my com- 
fort, as they may — I will not let go the anchor of 
my confidence in God — I will not be afraid, for I 
am of more value than many sparrows. 

But, thirdly, it was the telescope, that, by pierc- 
hig the obscurity which lies between us and distant 
worlds, put Infidelity in possession of the argument 
against which we are now contending. But, about 
the time of its invention, another instrument was 
formed, which laid open a scene no less wonderful, 
and rewarded the inquisitive spirit of man with a 
discovery, which serves to neutralize the whole of 
this argument. This was the microscope. The 
one led me to see a system in every star. The 
other leads me to see a world in every atom. The 
one taught me, that this mighty globe, with the 
whole burden of its people and of its countries, is 
but a grain of sand on the high field of immensity. 
The other .teaches me, that every grain of sand 
may harbour within it the tribes and the families 
of a busy population. The one told me of the in- 
significance of the world I tread upon. The other 
redeems it from all its insignificance ; for it tells me 
that in the leaves of every forest, and in the flowers 
of every garden, and in the waters of every rivulet, 
there are worlds teeming with life, and numberless 
as are the glories of the firmament. The one has 



DIVINE CONDESCENSION. 81 

sugsrested to me, that bevond and above all that 
is visible to man, there may lie fields of creation 
which sv/eep immeasurably along, and carry the 
impress of the Alinighty's hand to the remotest 
scenes of the universe. The other suggests to me, 
that within and beneath all that minuteness which 
the aided eye of man has been able to explore, 
there may lie a region of invisibles; and that, could 
we draw aside the mysterious curtain which shrouds 
it from our senses, we might there see a theatre 
of as many wonders as astronomy has unfolded, a 
universe within the compass of a point so small, 
as to elude all the powers of the microscope, but 
where the wondei'-working God finds room for 
the exercise of all His attributes, where He can 
raise another mechanism of worlds, and fill and 
animate them all with the evidences of His glory. 
Now, mark how all this may be made to meet 
the argument of our infidel astronomers. By the 
telescope, they have discovered that no magnitude, 
however vast, is beyond the grasp of the Divinity. 
But by the microscope, we have also discovered, 
that no minuteness, however shrunk from the no- 
tice of the human eye, is beneath the condescen- 
sion of His regard. Every addition to the powers 
of the one instrument, extends the limit of His 
visible dominions. But, by every addition to the 
powers of the other instrument, we see each part 
of them more crowded than before, with the won- 
ders of His unwearying hand. The one is con- 
stantly widening the circle of His territory. The 
other is as constantly filling up its separate por. 
tions, with all that is rich, and various, and exqui- 
d2 



82 THE EXTENT OF THE 

site. In a word, by the one I am told that the 
Almighty is now at work in regions more distant 
than geometry has ever measured, and among 
worlds more manifold than numbers have ever 
reached. But, by the other, I am also told, that 
with a mind to comprehend the whole, in the vast 
compass of its generality. He has also a mind to 
concentrate a close and a separate attention on 
each and on all of its particulars ; and that the 
tjame God, who sends forth an upholding influence 
among the orbs and the movements of ?.SLroi/omy, 
can fill the recesses of every single atom with the 
intimacy of his presence, and travel, in all the 
greatness of His unimpaired attributes, upon every 
one spot and corner of the universe He has formed 
They, therefore, who think that God will not 
put forth such a power, and such a goodness, and 
such a condescension, in behalf of this world, as 
are ascribed to Him in the New Testament, because 
He has so many other worlds to attend to, think 
of him as a man. I'hey confine their view to the 
informations of the telescope, and forget altogether 
the informations of the other instrument. They 
only find room in their minds for His one attribute 
of a large and general superintendence ; and keep 
out of their remembrance the equally impressive 
proofs we have for his other attribute, of a minute 
and multiplied attention to all that diversity of 
operations, where it is He that worketh all in all. 
And when I think, that as one of the instruments 
of philosophy has heightened our every impression 
of the first of these attributes, so another instru- 
ment has no less heightened our impression of th 



nrVINE CONDESCENSION. 83 

second of them — then I can no longer resist the 
conclusion, that it would be a transgression of 
sound argument, as well as a daring of impiety, 
to draw a limit aroimd the doings of this unsearch- 
ahle God — and, should a professed revelation from 
heaven toll me of an act of condescension, in be- 
half of some separate world, so wonderful, that 
angols desired to look into it, and the Eternal Son 
had to move from His seat of glory to carrv it into 
accomplishment, all I ask is the evidence of such 
a revelation ; for, let it tell me as much as it may 
of God letting himself down for the benefit of one 
single province of His dominions, this is no more 
than what 1 see lying scattered, in numberless ex- 
amples, before me ; and running tinough the whole 
line of my recollections ; and meeting me in every 
walk of observation to which I can betake myself; 
and, now that the microscope has unveiled the 
wonders of anotiser region, 1 see strewed around 
me, with a profusion which baffles my every attempt 
to comprehend it, the evidence that there is no one 
portion of the universe of God too minute for His 
liotice, nor too humble for the visitations of His 
care. 

As the end of all these illustrations, let me be- 
stow a single paragr?ph on what I conceive to be 
the precise state of this argument. 

It is a wonderful thing that God should be so 
unencumbered by the concerns of a whole universe, 
that He can give a constant attention to every 
moment of every individual in this world's popu- 
lation. But, wonderful as it is. you do not hesi- 
tate to ^rait it a? true, on the evidence of your 



8^ THE EXTENT OF THE 

own recollections. It is a wonderful thing that 
He, whose eye is at every instant on so many 
worlds, should have peopled the world we inhabit 
with all the traces of the varied design and bene- 
volence which abound in it. But great as the 
wonder is, you do not allow so much as the sha- 
dow of improbability to darken it, for its reality 
is what you actually witness, and you never think 
of questioning the evidence of observation. It is 
wonderful, it is passing wonderful, that the same 
God, whose presence is diffused through immen- 
sity, and who spreads the ample canopy of His 
administration over all its dwelling-places, should, 
with an energy as fresh and as unexpended as if 
He had only begun the work of creation, turn 
Him to the neighbourhood around us, and lavish, 
on its every hand-breadth, all the exuberance of 
His goodness, and crowd it with the many thou- 
sand varieties of conscious existence. But, be 
the wonder incomprehensible as it may, you do 
not suffer in your mind the burden of a single doubt 
to lie upon it, because you do not question the re- 
port of the microscope. You do not refuse it8 
information, nor turn away from it as an in- 
competent channel of evidence. But to bring 
it still nearer to the point at issue, there are 
many who never looked through a microscope, 
but who rest an implicit faith in all its revelatjons; 
and upon what evidence I would ask? Upon tne 
evidence of testimony — upon the credit they give 
to the authors of the books they have read, and the 
belief they put in the record of their observations. 
Now, at this point I make my s,tand. It is won* 



DIVINE CONDESCENSION. 85 

derfu] that God should be so hiterested m the 
redemption of a single world, as to send forth his 
tvell-beloved Son upon the errand ; and He, to 
accomplish it, should, mighty to save, put forth 
all His strength, and travail in the greatness of it. 
But such wonders as these have already multj 
plied upon you ; and when evidence is given oi 
their truth, you have resigned your every judg- 
ment of the unsearchable God, and rested in the 
faith of them. I demand, in the name of sound 
and consistent philosophy, that you do the same 
in the matter before us — and take it up as a ques- 
tion of evidence — and examine that mediuna of 
testimony through which the miracles and infor- 
mations of the Gospel have come to your door — . 
and go not to admit as argument here, what would 
not be admitted as argument in any of the analo- 
gies of nature and observation — and take along 
with you in this field of inquiry, a lesson which 
you should have learned upon other fields — even 
the depth of the riches buth of the wisdom and the 
knowledge of God, that His judgments are un- 
searchable, and His ways are past finding out. 

I do not enter at all into the positive evidence 
for the truth of the Christian Revelation, my single 
aim at present being to dispose of one of the objec- 
tions which is conceived to stand in the way of it. 
Let me suppose then, that this is done to the sa- 
tisfaction of a philosophical inquirer ; and that the 
evidence is sustained ; and that the same mind that 
is familiarized to all the sublimities of natural sci- 
ence, and has been in the habit of contemplating 
God in association with all the magnificence whicb 



86 THE EXTENT OF THf. 

is around him, shall be brought to submit its 
thoughts to the captivity of the doctrine of Christ. 
Oh ! with what veneration, and gratitude, and 
wonder, should he look on the descent of Him into 
this lower world, who made all these things, and 
without whom was not any thing made that was 
made. What a grandeur does it throw over every 
step in the redemption of a fallen world, to think 
of its being done by Him who unrobed Him of the 
glories of so wide a monarchy, and came to this 
humblest of its provinces, in the disguise of a ser- 
vant, and took upon Him the form of our degraded 
species, and let Himself down to sorrows, and to 
sufferings, and to death, for us ! In this love of 
an expiring Saviour to those for whom in agony 
He poured out His soul, there is a height, and a 
depth, and a length, and a breadth, more than I 
can comprehend ; and let me never from this mo- 
ment neglect so great a salvation, or lose my hold 
of an atonement, made sure by Him who cried 
that it was finished, and brought in an everlasting 
righteousness. It was not the visit of an empty 
parade that He made to us. . It was for the accom- 
plishment of some substantial purpose ; and if that 
purpose is announced, and stated to consist in His 
dying the just for the unjust, that He might bring 
us unto God, let us never doubt of our acceptance 
in that way of communication with our Father in 
heaven, which he hath opened and made known to 
us. In taking to that way, let us follow His every 
direction, with that humility which a sense of all 
this wonderful condescension is fitted to inspire. 
Let us forsake all that He bids us forsake. Let 



DIVINE CONDESCENSION. 8? 

■d8 do all that He bids us do. Let us give our- 
selves up to his guidance with the docility of child- 
ren overpowered by a kindness that we never 
merited, and a love that is unequalled by all the 
perverseness and all the ingratitude of our stubborn 
nature — for what shall we render unto Him for 
such mysterious benefits — to him who has thus 
been mindful of us — to him who thus has deigned 
to visit us ? 

But the whole of this argument is not yet ex- 
hausted. We have scarcely entered on the defence 
that is commonly made against the plea which In- 
fidelity rests on the wonderful extent of the universe 
of God, and the insignificancy of our assigned por- 
tion of it. The way in which we have attempted 
to dispose of this plea, is by insisting on the evi- 
dence that is every who've around us, of God com- 
bining, with the larg ;ness of a vast and mighty 
superintendance, which reaches the outskirts of 
creation, and spreads over all its amplitudes — the 
faculty of bestowing as much attention, and exer- 
cising as complete and manifold a wisdom, and 
lavishing as profuse and inexhaustible a goodness, 
on each of its humblest departments, as if it formed 
the whole extent of His territory. 

In the whole of this argument we have looked 
upon the earth as isolated from the rest of the 
universe altogether. But, according to the way 
in which the astronomical obje(;tion is commonly 
met, the earth is not viewed as in a state of de- 
tachment from the other worlds, and the other 
orders of being which God has called into existence. 
It is looked upon as the member of a more extend- 



B8 THE EXTENT OF THE 

ed system. It is associated with the magnificence 
of a moral empire, as wide as the kingdom of na- 
ture. It is not merely asserted, what in our last 
Discourse has been already done, that for any 
thing we can know by reason, the plan of redemp- 
tion may have its influences and its bearings on 
those creatures of God who people other regions, 
and occupy other fields in the immensity of hia 
dominions ; that to argue, therefore, on this plan 
being instituted for the single benefit of the world 
we live in, and of the species to v/hich we belong, 
is a mere presumption of the Infidel himself; and 
that the objection he rears on it must fall to the 
ground, when the vanity of the presumption is 
exposed. The Christian apologist thinks he can 
go farther than this — that he can not merely ex- 
pose the utter baselessness of the Infidel assertion, 
but that he has positive ground for erecting an 
opposite and a confronting assertion in its place — 
and that, after having neutralized their position, 
by showing the entire absence of all observation 
in its behalf, he can pass on to the distinct and 
affirmative testimony of the Bible. 

We do think that this lays open a very interest- 
ing track, not of wild and fanciful, but of most 
legitimate and sober-minded speculation. And 
anxious as we are to put every thing that bears 
upon the Christian argument, into all its lights; 
and fearless as we feel for the result of a most 
thorough sifting of it ; and thinking as we do think 
it, the foulest scorn that any pigmy philosopher of 
the day should mince his ambiguous scepticism to 
a set of giddy and ignorant admirers, or that a 



DIVINE CONDESCENSION. 89 

half-learned and superficial public should associate 
with the Christian priesthood, the blindness and 
the bigotry of a sinking cause — with these feelingnj 
we are not disposed to shun a single question that 
may be started on the subject of the Christian 
evidences. There is not one of its parts or bear- 
ings which needs the shelter of a disguise thrown 
over it. Let the priests of another faith ply their 
prudential expedients, and look so wise and so 
wary in the execution of them. But Christianity 
stands in a higher and a firmer attitude. The de- 
fensive armour of a shrinking or timid policy does 
not suit her. Hers is the naked majesty of truth; 
and with all the grandeur of age, but with none 
of its infirmities, has she come down to us, and 
gathered new strength from the battles she has 
won in the many controversies of many genera- 
tions. With such a religion as this there is no- 
thing to hide. All should be above boards. And 
the broadest light of day should be made fully and 
freely to circulate throughout all her secrecies. 
But secrets she has none. To her belong the 
frankness and the simplicity of conscious greatness; 
and whether she has to contend Avith the pride of 
philosophy, or stand in fronted opposition to the 
prejudices of the multitude, she does it upon her 
own strength, and spurns all the props and all tha 
B-uxiliaries of superstition away from her. 



90 KNOWLEDGE OF MAN's WOUAL HISTORl 



DISCOURSE IV. 

ON THE KNOWLEDGE OF MAN'S MORAL HIS. 
TORY IN THE DISTANT PLACESOF CREATION 



*' Which things the angels desire to look into." — 1 Peteb i. 12. 

There is a limit, across which man cannot carry 
any one of his perceptions, and from the ulterior of 
which he cannot gather a single observation to 
guide or to inform him. While he keeps by the 
objects which are near, he can get the knowledge 
of them conveyed to his mind tlu'ough the ministry 
of several of the senses. He can feel a substance 
that is within reach of his hand. He can smell a 
flower that is presented to him. He can taste the 
food that is before him. He can hear a sound of 
certain pitch and intensity ; and, so much does this 
sense of hearing widen his intercourse with external 
nature, that, from the distance of miles, it can bring 
hiui in an occasional intimation. 

But of all the tracts of conveyance which God 
has been pleased to open up between the mind of 
man, and the theatre by which he is surrounded, 
there is none by which he so multiplies his acquain- 
tance with the rich and the varied creation on every 
Bide of him, as by the organ of the eye. It is this 
which gives to man his loftiest command over the 
Bcenery of nature. It is this by which so broad a 
range of observation is submitted to him. It is thii 



IN DISTANT PLACES OF CREATION. 91 

which enables him, by the act of a single moment, 
to send an exploring look over the surface of an 
ample territory, to crowd his mind with the whole 
assembly of its objects, and to fill his vision with 
those countless hues which diversify and adorn it. 
It is this which carries him abroad over all that 
is sublime in the immensity of distance ; which 
sets him as it w^ere on an elevated platform, from 
whence he may cast a surveying glance over the 
arena of innumerable worlds ; which spreads before 
him so mighty a province of contemplation, that the 
earth he inhabits only appears to furnish him with 
the pedestal on which he may stand, and from which 
he may descry the wonders of all that magnificence 
which the Divinity has poured so abundantly around 
him. -It is by the narrow outlet of the eye, that 
the mind of man takes its excursive flight over 
those golden tracks, v/here, in all the exhaustless- 
ness of creative wealth, lie scattered the suns and 
the systems of astronomy. But how good a thing it 
is, and how becoming well, for the philosopher to 
be humble even amid the proudest march of human 
discovery, and the sublimest triumphs of the human 
understanding, when he thinks of that unsealed 
barrier, beyond which no power, either of eye or 
of telescope, shall ever carry him ; when he thinks 
that, on the other side of it, there is a height, and a 
depth, and a length, and a breadth, to which the 
whole of this concave and visible firmament dwindles 
into the insignificancy of an atom — and above all, how 
ready should he be to cast every lofty imagination 
away from him, when he thinks of the God, wiio, 
on the simple foundation of His word, has reared 



92 KNOWLEDGE OF MAN's MORAL HISTORY 

the whole of this stately architecture, and, by the 
force of His preserving hand, continues to uphold 
it ; and should the word again come out from Him, 
that this earth shall pass away, and a portion of 
the heavens which are around it, shall fall back into 
the annihilation from which He at first summoned 
them — what an impressive rebuke does it bring on 
the swelling vanity of science, to think that the 
whole field of its most ambitious enterprises may 
be swept away altogether, and still there remain 
before the eye of Him who sitteth on the throne, 
an untravelled immensity, which He hath filled 
with innumerable splendours, and over the whole 
face of which he hath inscribed the evidence of His 
high attributes, in all their might, and in all their 
manifestation. 

But man has a great deal more to keep him 
humble of his understanding, than a mere sense of 
that boundary which skirts and which terminates 
the material field of his contemplations. He ought 
also to feel, how, within that boundary, the vast 
majority of things is mysterious and unknown to 
him — that even in the inner chamber of his own 
consciousness, where so much lies hidden from the 
observation of others, there is also to himself a little 
world of incomprehensibles ; that if stepping beyond 
the limits of this familiar home, he look no farther 
than to the members of his family, there is much 
in the cast and the colour of every mind that is 
above his powers of divination ; that in proportion as 
he recedes from the centre of his own personal ex- 
perience, there is a cloud of ignorance and secrecy 
which spreads, and thickens, and throws a deep 



IN DISTANT PLACES OF CREATION. 93 

and impenetrable veil over the intricacies of every- 
one department of human contemplation ; that ol 
all around him, his knowledge is naked and super- 
ficial, and confined to a few of those more conspicu- 
ous lineaments which strike upon his senses; that 
the whole face, both of nature and of society, pre- 
sents him with questions which he cannot unriddle, 
and tells him that beneath the surface of all that the 
eye can rest upon, there lies the profoundness of a 
most unsearchable latency ; and should he in some 
lofty enterprise of thought, leave this world, and 
shoot afar into those tracks of speculation which 
astronomy has opened, should he, baffled by the 
mysteries which beset his footsteps upon earth, 
attempt an ambitious flight towards the mysteries 
of heaven — let him go, but let the justness of a 
pious and phi) osophicar modesty go along with him 
—let him forget not, that from the moment his 
mind has taken its ascending way for a few little 
miles above the world he treads upon, his every sense 
abandons him but one — that number, and motion, 
and magnitude, and figure, make up all the bare- 
ness of its elementary informations — that these orbs 
have sent him scarce another message than told by 
their feeble gUmmering upon his eye, the simple 
fact of their existence — that he sees not the land- 
scape of other worldis — that he knows not the moral 
system of any one of them — nor athwart the long 
and trackless vacancy w^hich lies between, does 
there fall upon his listening ear the hum of their 
mighty populations. 

But the knowledge which he cannot fetch up 
himself from the obscuritv of this wondrous but 



94 KNOWLEDGE OF MAN's MORAL HISTORY 

untraveiied scene, by the exereisie of any one of hi« 
own senses, might be fetched to him by the testi- 
mony of a competent messenger. Conceive a 
native of one of these planetary mansions to hght 
upon our world ; and all we should require, would 
be, to be suitisfied of his credentials, that we may 
give our faith to every point of information he had 
to offer us. With the solitary exception of what 
we have been enabled to gather by the instruments 
of astronomy, there is not one of his communications 
about the place he came from, on which we possess 
any means at all of confronting him ; and, there- 
fore, could he only appear before us invested with 
the characters of truth, we should never think of 
any thing else than taking up the whole matter of 
nis testimony just as he brought it to us. 

It were well had a sound philosophy schooled 
its professing disciples to the same kind of acquies- 
cence in another message, which has actually come 
to the world ; and has told us of matters still more 
remote from every power of unaided observation ; 
and has been sent from a more sublime and myste- 
rious distance, even from that God of whom it is 
said, that "clouds and darkness are the habitation 
of his throne ;" and treating of a theme so lofty 
and so inaccessible, as the counsels of that Eternal 
Spirit, " whose goings forth are of old, even from 
everlasting," challenges of man that he should sub- 
mit his every thought to the authority of this high 
communication. Oh 1 had the philosophers of the 
day known as well as their great master, how to 
wraw tiie vigorous land-mark which verges the field 
of legitimate discovery, they shoiiJd. have seen when 



IN DISTANT FLACKS OF CREATfON. 9 

it is that philosophy becomes vain, and scieuce is 
falsely so caiied; and how it is, that when phiio- 
Bophy is true to her principles, she shuts up her 
faithful votary to the Bible, and makes him willing 
to count all but loss, for the knowledge of Jesus 
Christ, and of Him crucified. 

But let it be well observed, that the object of 
this message is not to convey information to ua 
about the state of these planetary regions. This is 
not the matter with which it is fraught. It is a 
message from the throne of God to this rebellious 
province of His dominions ; and the purpose of it 
is, to reveal the fearful extent of our guilt and of 
our danger, and to lay before us the overtures of 
reconciliation. Were a similar message sent from 
the metropolis of a mighty empire to one of its 
remote and revolutionary districts, we should not 
look to it for much information about the state or 
economy of the intermediate provinces. This were 
a departure from the topic on hand — though still 
there may chance to be some incidental allusions 
to the extent and resources of the whole inonarchy, 
to the existence of a similar spirit of rebellion in 
other quarters of the land, or to the general 
principle of loyalty by which it was pervaded. 
Some casual references of this kind may be inserted 
in such a proclamation, or they may not — and it is 
with this precise feeling of ambiguity that we open 
the record of that embassy which has been sent us 
from heaven, to see if we can gather any thing 
there, about other places of the creation, to meet the 
objections of the infidel astronomer. But, while we 
pursue this object, let us be careful not to pusb 



96 KNOWLEDOE OF MAN's MORAL HISTOBT 

tue speculation beyond the limits of the written 
testimony; let us keep a just and a steady eye oi! 
the actual boundary of our knowledge, that, through- 
out every distinct step of our argument, we might 
preserve that chaste and unambitious spirit, which 
characterizes the philosophy of him who explored 
these distant heavens, and, by the force of his 
genius, unravelled the secret of that wondrous 
mechanism wiiich upholds them. 

The informations of the Bible upon this subject, 
are of two sorts — that from which we confidently 
gather the fact, that the history of the redemption 
of our species is known in other and distant places 
of the creation — and that from which we indistinct- 
ly guess at the fact, that the redemption itself may 
stretch beyond the limits of the world we occupy. 

And here it may shortly be adverted to, that, 
though we know little or nothing of the moral and 
theological economy of the other planets, we are 
not to infer, that the beings who occupy these widely 
extended regions, even though not higher than we 
in the scale of understanding, know little of ours. 
Our first parents, ere they committed that act by 
which they brought themselves and their posterity 
into the need of redemption, had frequent and fam- 
iliar intercourse with God. He walked with them 
in the garden of paradise, and there did angels hold 
their habitual converse ; and, should the same uA- 
blotted innocence which charmed and attracted 
these superior beings to the haunts of Eden, be 
perpetuated in every planet but our own, then 
uiighl each of them be tlje scene of high and 
heavenly communications, and an open way for the 



IN DISTANT PLACES OF CREATION. 97 

messengers of God be kept up with them all, and 
their jnhaDitanis bo admitted to a share in the themes 
and contemplations of angels, and have their spirits 
exercised on those things, of which we are told that 
the angels desired to look into them ; and thus, as 
we talk of the public mind of a city, or the public 
mind of an empire — by the well-frequented avenues 
of a free and ready circulation, a public mind might 
be formed throughout the whole extent of God's 
sinless and intelligent creation — and, just as we 
often read of the eyes of all Europe being turned 
to the one spot where some affair of eventful impor- 
tance is going on, there might be the eyes of a whole 
universe turned to the one world, where rebellion 
against the Majesty of heaven had planted its 
standard ; and for the readmission of which within 
the circle of His fellowship, God, whose justice was 
inflexible, but whose mercy He had, by some plan 
of mysterious wisdom, made to rejoice over it, was 
putting forth all the might, and travailing in all 
the greatness of the attributes which belonged to 
Him. 

But, for the full understanding of this argument, 
it must be remarked, that while in our exiled 
habitation, where all is darkness, and rebellion, and 
enmity, the creature engrosses every heart ; and 
our affections, when they shift at all, only wander 
from one fleeting vanity to another, it is not so in 
the habitations of the unfallen. There, every de- 
sire aud every movement is subordinated to God. 
He is seen in all that is formed, and in all that is 
spread around them — and, amid the fulness of that 
delight with which tbej expatiate over the good aiui 

VOL. VII. E 



99 KNOWLEDGE OF MANS M OH \L HISTORY 

the fair of this wondrous universe, the animating 
^*narm wnich pervaues tlitir every conteiuplatioii, 
IS, that they behold, on each visible thing, the im- 
press of the mind tha'; conceived, and of the hand 
that made and that upholds it. Here, God is 
banished from the thoughts of every natural man, 
and, by a firm and constantly maintained act of 
usurpation, do the things of sense and of time wield 
an entire ascendancy. There, God is all in all. They 
walk in His light. They rejoice in the beatitudes 
of His presence. The veil is from off their eyes ; 
and they see the character of a presiding Divinity 
in every scene, and in every event to which the 
Divinity has given birth. It is this which stamps 
a glory and an importance on the whole field of 
their contemplations ; and when they see a new 
evolution in the history of created things, the reason 
they bend towards it so attentive an eye, is, that it 
speaks to their understanding some new evolution 
in the purposes of God — some new manifestation of 
His high attributes — some new and interesting step 
in the history of His sublime administration. 

Now, we ought to be aware how it takes off, 
not from the intrinsic weight, but from the actual 
impression of our argument, that this devotedness 
to God which reigns in other places of the creation ; 
this interest in Him as the constant and essential 
principle of all enjoyment ; this concern in the 
untaintedness of his glory ; this delight in the survey 
of His perfections and His doings, are what the 
men of our corrupt and darkened world cannot 
sympathize with. 

But however littie we tuay enter into it, the Bible 



IN DK8TANT PLACES OF CREATION. 99 

tells ivs, by many intimations, that amongst those 
creatures who have not fallen from their allegiance, 
nor departed from the living God, God is their all 
— that love to Him sits enthroned in their hearts, 
and fills them with all the ecstasy of an overwhelming 
affection — that a sense of grandeur never so elevates 
their souls, as when they look at the might and 
majesty of the Eternal — that no field of cloudless 
transparency so enchants them by the blissfulness 
of its visions, as when, at the shrine of infinite and 
unspotted holiness, they bend themselves in raptured 
adoration — that no beauty so fascinates and attracts 
them, as does that moral beauty which throv/s a 
softening lustre over the awfulness of the Godhead 
— in a word, that the image of his character is ever 
present to their contemplations, and the unceasing 
joy of their sinless existence lies in the knowledge 
and the admiration of Deity. 

Let us put forth an effort, and keep a steady hold 
of this consideration, f6r the deadness of our earthly 
imaginations makes an effort necessary ; and we 
shall perceive, that though the world we live in were 
the alone theatre of redemption, there is a something 
in the redemption itself that is fitted to draw the 
eye of an arrested universe towards it. Surely, 
where delight in God is the constant enjoyment, and 
the earnest intelligent contemplation of God is the 
constant exercise, there is nothing in the whole 
compass of nature or of history, that can so set His 
adoring myriads upon the gaze, as some new and 
wondrous evolution of the character of God. Now 
tnis is found in the plan of our redemption ; nor do 
we see how, in any transaction between the great 



100 KNOWLEDGE OF MAN's iMORAL HISTORY 

Father of existence, and the children who have 
aprung from Him, the moral attributes of the Deity 
could, if we may so express ourselves, he put to so 
severe and so delicate a test. It is true, that the 
great matters of sin and of salvation, fall without im- 
pression on the heavy ears of a listless and alienated 
world. But they who, to use the language of the 
Bible, are light in the Lord, look otherwise at these 
things. They see sin in all its malignity, and sal- 
vation in all its mysterious greatness. And it would 
put them on the stretch of all their faculties, when 
they saw rebellion lifting up its standard against the 
Majesty of heaven, and the truth and tlie justice of 
God embarked on the threatenings He had uttered 
against all the doers of iniquity, and the honours of 
that august throne, which has the firm pillars of 
immutability to rest upon, linked with the fulfilment 
of the law that had come out from it ; and w hen 
nothing else was looked for, but that God, by putting 
forth the power of His wrath, should accomplish 
His every denunciation, and vindicate the infiexi- 
bility of His government, and, by one sweeping deed 
of vengeance, assert, in the sight of all His creatures, 
the sovereignty which belonged to Him — with what 
desire must they have pondered on His ways, when, 
amid the urgency of all those demands which looked 
so high and so indispensable, they saw the unfoldings 
of the attribute of mercy — and that the Supreme 
Lawgiver was bending upon His guilty creatures 
an eye of tenderness — and that, in His profound 
and unsearchable w isdom. He was devising for them 
some plan of restoration — and that the eternal Son 
had to move from His dwelling-place in heaven, to 



IN DISTANT PLACES OF CREATION. 101 

carry it forward through all the difficulties by which 
it was encompassed — and that, after by the virtue 
of His mysterious sacrifice He had. magnified the 
glory of every other perfection, He made mercy 
rejoice over them all, and threw open a way by 
which we sinful and polluted wanderers might, with 
^ the whole lustre of theDivine character untarnished, 
be re-admitted into fellowship with God, and be 
again brought back within the circle of His loyal 
and affectionate family. 

Now, the essential character of such a transac- 
tion, viewed as amanifestationof God, does not hang 
upon the number of woi'lds, over which this sin 
and this salvation may have extended. We know 
that over this one world such an economy of wisdom 
and of mercy is instituted — and, even should this be 
the only world that is embraced by it, the moral 
display of the Godhead is mainly and substantially 
the same, as if it reached throughout the whole of 
that habitable extetit which the science of astronomy 
has made known to us. By the disobedience of 
this one world, the law was trampled on — and, in 
the business of making truth and mercy to meet, 
and have a harmonious accomplishment on the men 
of this world, the dignity of God was put to the 
same trial ; the justice of God appeared to lay the 
same immoveable barrier ; the wisdom of God had 
to clear a way through the same difficulties ; the 
forgiveness of God had to find the same mysterious 
conveyance to the sinners of a solitary world, as to 
the sinners of half a universe. The extent of the 
field upon which this question was decided, has no 
more influence on the question itself, than the tigui-e 



i02 KNOWLEDGE OF MAN's MORAL HISTORY 

or the dimensions of that field of combat, on whic't'. 
some great political question was fought, has on 
the importance or on the moral principles of the 
controversy that gave rise to it. This objection 
about the narrowness of the theatre, carries along 
with it all the grossness of materialism. To the 
eye of spiritual and intelligent beings, it is nothing. 
In their view, the redemption of a sinful world 
derives its chief interest from the display it gives of 
the mind and purposes of the Deity — and, should 
that world be but a single speck in the immensity 
of the works of God, the only way in which this 
affects their estimate of Him is to magnify Hia 
loving-kindness — who, rather than lose one solitary 
world of the myriads He has formed, would lavish 
all the riches of His beneficence and of His wisdom 
on the recovery of its guilty population. 

Now, though it must be admitted that the Bible 
does not speak clearly or decisively as to the proper 
effect of redemption being extended to other worlds; 
it speaks most clearly and most decisively about the 
knowledge of its being disseminated amongst other 
orders of created intelligence than our own. But 
if the contemplation of God be their supreme 
enjoyment, then the very circumstance of our re- 
demption being known to them, may invest it, even 
though itbe but the redemption of one solitary world, 
with an importance as wide as the universe itself. 
It may spread amongst the hosts of immensity a 
new illustration of the character of Him who is all 
their praise ; and in looking tov/ards whom every 
energy within them is moved to the exercise of a 
deep and delighted admiration. ^J'he scene of the 



IN DISTANT PLACES OF CEEATION, 103 

hr&nsaction may be narrow in point of material ex» 
lent ; while in the transaction itself there may be 
such a moral dignity, as to blazon the perfections of 
the Godhead over the face of creation ; and, from 
the manifested glory of the Eternal, to send forth a 
tide of ecstasy, and of high gratulation, throughout 
the whole extent of His dependent provinces. 

We shall not, in proof of the position, that the 
history of our redemption is known in other and 
distant places of creation, and is matter of deep 
interest and feeling amongst other orders of created 
intelligence — we shall not put down all the quota- 
tions which might be assembled together upon this 
argument. It is an impressive circumstance, that 
when Moses and Elias made a visit to our Saviour 
on the mount of transfiguration, and appeared in 
glory from heaven, the topic they brought along 
with them, and with which they were fraught, was 
the decease He was going to accomplish at Jer- 
usalem. And however insipid the things of our 
salvation may be to an earthly understanding ; we 
are made to know, that in the sufferings of Christ, 
and the glory which should follow, there is matter 
to attract the notice of celestial spirits, for these 
are the very things, says the BiblQ, which the angels 
desire to look into. And however listlessly we, the 
dull and grovelling children of an exiled family, may 
feel about the perfections of the Godhead, and the 
display of these perfections in the economy of the 
Gospel ; it is Ln*-,irr.ated tc u? m the book of God's 
message, that the creation has its districts and its 
provinces ; and we accordingly read of thrones and 
dominions, and principalities and powers — and 



104 KNOWLEDGE OF MAN's MORAL HISTORY 

whether these terms denote the separate regions of 
government, or the beings who, by a commission 
granted from the sanctuary of heaven, sit in dele- 
gated authority over them — even in their eyes the 
mystery of Christ stands arrayed in all the splendour 
of unsearchable riches; for we are told that this 
mystery was revealed for the very intent, that unto 
the principalities and powers, in heavenly places, 
might be made known by the church, the manifold 
wisdom of God. And while we, whose prospect 
reaches not beyond the narrow limits of the corner 
we occupy, look on the dealings of God in the world, 
as carrying in them all the insignificancy of a 
provincial transaction ; God Himself, whose eye 
reaches to places which our eye hath not seen, nor 
our ear heard of, neither hath it entered into the 
imagination of our heart to conceive, stamps a 
universality on tlie whole matter of the Christian 
salvation, by such revelations as the following : — 
That he is to gather together in one all things in 
Christ, both which are in heaven, and which are 
in earth, even in him — and that at the name of Jesus 
every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and 
things in earth, and things under the earth — and 
that by him God^ reconciled all things unto himself, 
whether they be things in earth, or things in heaven. 
We will not say in how far some of these passages 
extend the proper effect of that redemption which 
is by Christ Jesus, to other quarters of the universe 
of God ; but they at least go to establish a widely 
disseminated knowledge of this transaction amongst 
the other orders of created intelligence. And they 
give us a distant glimpse of something more e*. 



IN DISTANT PLACES OF CREATION. 105 

tended. They present a faint opening, through 
which may be seen some few traces of a wider and 
a nobler dispensation. They bring before us a dim 
transparency, on the other side of which the images 
of an obscure magnificence dazzle indistinctly upon 
the eye ; and tell us, that in the economy of 
redemption, there is a grandeur commensurate to 
all that is known of the other works and purposes 
of the Eternal. They offer us no details ; and 
man, who ougnt not to attempt a wisdom above 
that which is written, should never put forth his 
hand to the drapery of that impenetrable curtain 
which God, in His mysterious wisdom, has spread 
over those ways, of which it is but a very small 
portion that we know of them. But certain it is, 
that we know so much of them from the Bible; 
and the Infidel, with all the pride of his boasted 
astronomy, knows so little of them, from anv power 
of observation — that the baseless argument of his, 
on which we have dwelt so long, is overborne in 
the light of all that positive evidence which God 
has poured around the record of His own testimony, 
and even in the light of its more obscure and casual 
intimations. 

The minute and variegated details of the way in 
which this wondrous economy is extended, God 
has chosen to withhold from us ; but He has 
oftener than once, made to us a broad and a 
general announcement of its dignity. He does not 
tell us, whether the fountain opened in the house 
of Judah, for sin and for uncleanness, sends forth 
its healing streams to other worlds than our own. 
He does not tell us the extent of the atonement, 

E ?. 



106 KNOWI.F.DGE OF MAN's MORAL HISTORY 

But He tells us that thie atonement itself, kno'5vi\ 
as it is, among the myriads of the celestial, forms 
the high song of eternity ; that the Lamb who was 
slain, is surrounded by the acclamations of one wide 
and universal empire ; that the might of His 
wondrous achievements, spreads a tide of gratulation 
over the multitudes who are about His throne ; and 
that there never ceases to ascend from the wor- 
shippers of Him, who washed us from our sina 
in his blood, a voice loud as from numbei's with- 
out number, sweet as from blessed voices uttering 
joy, when heaven rings jubilee, and loud hosannahs 
fill the eternal regions. 

" And I beheld, and I heard the voice of many 
angels round about the throne ; and the number of 
them was ten thousand times ten thousand, and 
tiiousands of thousands ; saying with a loud voice. 
Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power, 
and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honour, 
and glory, and blessing. And every creature which 
is in heaven, and on earth, and under the earth, 
and such as are in the sea, and all that are in them, 
heard I saying, Blessing, and honour, and glory, 
and power, be unto him that sitteth on the throne, 
and unto the Lamb, for ever and ever." 

A king might have the whole of his reign 
crowded with the enterprises of glory ; and by the 
might of his arms, and the wisdom of his counsels, 
might win the first 'eputation among the potentates 
of the world ; and be idolized throughout all his 
provinces, for the wealth and the security that he 
had spread around them — i.nd still it is conceivable, 
that by the act of a single day in behalf of a single 



IN DISTANT PLACES OF CRF:AT10N. 107 



a poor and solitary cottage; by some deed of 
compassion, which conferred enlargement and relief 
on one despairing sufferer ; by some graceful move- 
ment of sensibility at a tale of wretchedness; by some 
noble eff"ort of self-denial, in virtue of which he 
subdued his every purpose of revenge, and spread 
the mantle of a generous oblivion over the fault of 
the man who had insulted and aggrieved him; 
above all, by an exercise of pardon so skilfully- 
administered, as that, instead of bringing him down 
to a state of defencelessness against the provocation 
of future injuries, it threw a deeper sacredness 
over him, and stamped a more inviolable dignity 
than ever on his person and character: — why, on 
the strength of one such performance} done in a 
single hour, and reaching no farther in its immediate 
effects than to one house, or to one individual, it 
is a most possible thing, that the highest monarch 
upon earth might draw such a lustre around him, 
as would eclipse the renown of all his public 
achievements — and that such a display of mag- 
nanimity, or of worth, beaming from the secrecy of 
his familiar moments, might waken a more cordial 
veneration in ever^' bosom, than all the splendour 
of his conspicuous history — and that it might pass 
down to posterity as a more endarmg monument 
of greatness, and raise him farther, by its mora^ 
elevation, abOve the level of ordinary praise ; and 
when he passes in revievv before the men of distant 
ages, may this deed of modest, gentle, unobtrusive 
virtue, be at all times appealed to, as the rcoet 
•ublime and touching memorial of his name. 



108 KNOWLEDGE OF MAN's MORAL HISTORY 

In like manner did the King eternal, immortal, 
and invisible, surrounded as He is with the splen- 
dours of a wide and everlasting monarchy, turn 
Him to our humble habitation ; and the footsteps 
of God manifest in the flesh, have been on the 
narrow spot of ground we occupy; and small though 
our mansion be, amid the orbs and the systems of 
immensity, hither hath the King of glory bent His 
mysterious way, and entered the tabernacle of men, 
iind in tiie disguise of a servant did he sojourn for 
years under the roof which canopies our obscure 
and solitary world. Yes, it is but a twinkling atom 
in the peopled infinity of worlds that are around it 
— but look to the moral grandeur of the transaction, 
and not to the material extent of the field upon 
which it was executed — and from the retirement of 
our dwelling-place, there may issue forth such a 
display of the Godhead, as will circulate the glories 
of His name amongst all his worshippers. Here 
sin entered. Here was the kind and unwearied 
beneficence of a Father, repaid by the ingratitude 
of a whole family. Here the law of God was dis- 
honoured, and that too in the face of its proclaimed 
and unalterable sanctions. Here the mighty con- 
test of the attributes was ended — and when justice 
put forth its demands, and truth called for the 
fulfilment of its warnings, and the immutability of 
God would not recede by a single iota from any 
one of its positions, and all the severities He ever 
uttered against the children of iniquity, seemed to 
gather into one cloud of threatening vengeance on 
the tenement that held us — did the visit of the only- 
begotten Son chase away all these obstacles to the 



IN DISTANT PLACBS OF CREATION. 109 

^iumph of mercy — and humble as the tenement 
may be, deeply shaded in the obscurity of insigni- 
ficance as it is, among the statelier mansions which 
are on every side of it — yet will the recall of its 
exiled family never be forgotten, and the illustration 
that has been given here of the mingled grace and 
majesty of God, will never lose its place among the 
themes and the acclamations of eternity. 

And here it may be remarked, that as the earthly 
king who throws a moral aggrandizement around 
him by the act of a single day, finds, that after its 
performance he may have the space of many years 
for gathering to himself the triumphs of an extended 
reign — so the King who sits on high, and with whom 
one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand 
years as one day, will find, that after the period of 
that special administration is ended, by which this 
strayed world is again brought back within the limits 
of His favoured creation, there is room enough 
along the mighty track of eternity, for accumulating 
upon Himself a glory as wide and as universal as 
is the extent of his dominions. You will allow the 
most illustrious of this world's potentates, to give 
some hour of his private history to a deed of cot- 
tage or of domestic tenderness ; and every time you 
think of the interesting story, you will feel how 
sweetly and how gracefully the remembrance of it 
blends itself with the fame of his public achieve- 
ments. But still you think that there would not 
have been room enough for these achievements of 
his, had much of his time been spent, either amongst 
the habitations of the poor, or in the retirement of 
his own family ; and you conceive, that it is because 



110 KNOWLEDGE OF MAN's MORAL HISTOHT 

a sine;le day bears so small a D-oportion to tbe 
tinie of his whole history, that he has been able to 
combine an interesting display of private worth, 
with all that brilliancy of exhibition, which has 
brought him down to posterity in the character of 
an august and a mighty sovereign. 

Now apply this to the matter before us. Had the 
history of our redemption been confined within the 
limits of a single day, the argument that Infidelity 
has drawn from the multitude of other worlds would 
never have been offered. It is true, that ours is 
but an insignificant portion of the territory of God 
■ — but if the attentions by which He has signalized 
it, had only taken up a single day, this would never 
have occurred to us as forming any sensible with- 
draw ment of the mind of the Deity from the concerns 
of His vast and universal government. It is the 
time which the plan of our salvation requires, that 
startles all those on whom this argument has any 
impression. It is the time taken up about this 
paltry world, which they feel to be out of propor- 
tion to the number of other worlds, and to the im- 
mensity of tlie surrounding creation. Now, to 
meet this impression, we do not insist at present on 
what we have already brought forward, that God, 
whose ways are not as our ways, can have His eye 
at the same instant on every place, and can divide 
and diversify His attention into any number of 
distinct exercises. What we have now to remark 
is, that the Infidel who urges the astronomical ob- 
jecrinn to the truth of Christianity, is onJv looking 
with half an eye to the principle on which it rests* 
Carry out the principle, and tlie objection vanishes. 



IN EISTANT PLACES OF CPEATIOK'. Ill 

lie looks abroad on the immensity of space, and 

tells us how impossible it is, that this narrow corner 
of it can be so distinguished by the attentions of 
the Deity. Why does he not also look abroad on 
the magnificence of eternity ; and perceive how the 
whole period of these peculiar attentions, how the 
whole time which elapses between the fall of man 
and the consummation of the scheme of his recovery, 
is but the twinkling of a moment to the mighty roll 
of innumerable ages ? The whole interval between 
the time of Jesus Christ's leaving his Father's abode 
to sojourn amongst us, to that time when He shall 
have put all his enemies under His feet, and deliver- 
ed up the kingdom to God even His Father, that 
God may be all in all ; the whole of this interval 
bears as small a proportion to the whole of the Al- 
mighty's reign, as this solitary world does to the 
universe around it ; and an infinitely smaller pro- 
portion than any time, however short, which an 
earthly monarch spends on some enterprise of private 
benevolence, does to the whole walk of his public 
and recorded history. 

Why then does not the man, who can shoot his 
conceptions so sublimely abroad over the field of an 
immensity that knows no limits — why does he not 
also shoot them forward through the vista of a spc- 
eession, that ever flows without stop and without 
termination ? He has stept across the confines of 
this world's habitation in space, and out of the field 
vv'hich lies on the other side of it has he gathered 
an argument against the truth of revelation. We 
feel that we have nothing to do but to step across 
the confines of this world's iiistory in time, and out 



112 KNOWLEDGE OF MAN*S MORAL, &C. 

ol the futurity which lies beyond it can we gathftl 
that which will blow the argument to pieces, or 
stamp upon it all the narrowness of a partial and 
mistaken calculation. The day is coming when the 
whole of this wondrous history shall be looked back 
upon by the eye of remembrance, and be regarded 
as one incident in the extended annals of creation ; 
and, with all the illustration and all the glory it has 
thrown on the character ctf the Deity, will it be seen 
as a single step in the evolution of His designs ; 
and long as the time may appear, from the first act 
of our redemption to its final accomplishment, and 
close and exclusive as we may think the attentions 
of God upon it, it will be found that it has left Him 
room enough for all His concerns ; and that, on the 
high scale of eternity, it is but one of those passing 
and ephemeral transactions which crowd the histoij 
oi a uever-ending administration. 



THE SYMPATHY FELT FOR M>N, &C. 



DISCOURSE V. 

ON THE SYMPATHY THAT IS FELT FOR MAN 
IN THE DISTANT PLACES OF CREATION. 



* I tay unto you, That likewise joy shall be in heaven over obm 
sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine juat 
persons, which need no repentance." — Luke xv. 7. 

Ws have already attempted at full length to es- 
tablish the position, that the infidel argunient of 
astronomers goes to expunge a natural perfection 
from the character of God, even that wondrous 
property of His, by which He, at the same instant 
of time, can bend a close and a careful attention 
on a countless diversity of objects, and diffuse the 
intimacy of His power and of His presence, from 
the greatest to the minutest and most insignificant 
of them all. We also adverted shortly to this other 
circumstance, that it went to impair a moral at- 
tribute of the Deity. It goes to impair the bene- 
volence of His nature. It is saying much for the 
benevolence of God, to say, that a single world, or 
a single system, is not enough for it — that it must 
have the spread of a mightier region, on which it 
may pour forth a tide of exuberancy throughout all 
its provinces — that as far as our vision can carry 
us, it has strewed immensity with the floating re- 
ceptacles of life, and has stretched over each of 
them the garniture of such a sky as mantles oiur 



[14 THE SYMPATHY FELT FOR MAN 

own habitation — and that even from distances whicK 
are far beyond the reach of human eye, the songs 
of -gratitude and praise may now be arising to the 
one God, who sits surrounded by the regards of 
His one great and universal family. 

Now it is saying much for the benevolence of 
God, to say, that it sends forth these wide and 
distant emanations over the surface of a territory 
so ample, that the world we inhabit, lying imbed- 
ded, as it does, amidst so much surrounding great- 
ness, shrinks into a point that to the universal eye' 
niigiit appear to be almost imperceptible. But 
does it not add to the power and to the perfection 
of this universal eye, that at the very moment it is 
taking a comprehensive survey of the vast, it can 
fasten a steady and undistracted attention on each 
minute and separate portion of it ; that at the very 
moment it is looking at all worlds, it can look most 
pointedly and most intelligently to each of them ; 
that at the very moment it sweeps the field of im- 
mensity, it can settle all the earnestness of its 
regards upon every distinct handbreadth of that 
field ; that at the very moment at which it embraces 
the totality of existence, it can send a most thorough 
and penetrating inspection into each of its details, 
and into every one of its endless diversities ? We 
cannot fail to perceive how much this adds to the 
power of the all-seeing eye. Tell us then, if it do not 
add as much perfection to the benevolence of God, 
that while it is expatiating over the vast field of 
created things, there is not one portion of the field 
overlooked by it ; that while it scatters blessings 
over the wnoie of an infinite range, it causes them 



IN DISTANT PLACES OF CREATION. 115 

to descend in a shower of plenty on every separata 
habitation; that while His arm is underneath and 
round about all worlds, He enters within the pre- 
cincts of every one of them, and gives a care and a 
tenderness to each individual of their teeming po- 
pulation. Does not the God, who is said to be 
love, shed over this attribute of his its finest illus- 
tration — when, while He sits in the highest heaven, 
and pours out His fuln-ss on the whole subordinate 
domain of nature and of providence, He bows a 
pitying regard on the very humblest of His children, 
and sends His reviving Spirit into every heart, and 
cheers by His presence every home, and provides 
for the wants of every family, and watches every 
sick-bed, and listens to the complaints of every 
sufferer; and while by his wondrous mind the 
weight of universal government is borne, is it not 
more wondrous and more excellent still, that He 
feels for every sorrow, and has an ear open to every 
prayer ? 

" It doth not yet appear what we shall be," says 
the apostle John, " but we know that when he shall 
appear, we shall be like him, for we shall see him 
as he is." It is the present lot of the angels, that 
they behold the face of our Father in heaven, and it 
would seem as if the effect of this was to form and 
to perpetuate in them the moral likeness of Him 
self, and that they reflect back upon Him His own 
image, and that thus a diffused resemblance to the 
Godhead is kept up amongst all those adoring wor- 
shippers who live in the near and rejoicing contem- 
plation of the Godliead, Mark then how tl'Pt 
peculiar and endearing feature in the goofbiess of 



116 THE SYMPATHY FELT FOR MAN 

the Deity, which we have just now adverted to— 
mark how beauteoiisiy it is rel-ected downwarda 
upon us in the revealed attitude of angels. From 
the high eminences of heaven, are they bending a 
wakeful regard over the men of this sinful world ; 
and the repentance of every one of them spreads a 
joy and a high gratulation throughout all its 
dwelling-places. Put this trait of the angelic 
character into contrast with the dark and louring 
spirit of an Infidel. He is told of the multitude of 
other worlds, and he feels a kindling magnificence 
in the conception, and he is seduced by an elevation 
which he cannot carry, and from this airy summit 
does he look down on the insignificance of the world 
we occupy, and pronounces it to be unworthy of 
those visits and of those attentions which we read 
of in the New Testament. He is unable to wing 
his upward way along the scale, either of moral or 
of natural perfection ; and when the wonderful 
extent of the field is made known to him, over 
which the wealth of the Divinity is lavished — there 
he stops, and wilders, and altogether misses this 
essential perception, that the power and perfection 
of the Divinity are not more displayed by the mere 
magnitude of the field, than they are by that minute 
and exquisite filling up, which leaves rot its smallest 
portions neglected ; but which imprints the fulness 
of the Godhead upon every one of them ; and proves, 
by every flower of the pathless desert, as well ag 
by every orb of immensity, how this unsearchable 
Being can care for all, and provide for all, and, 
throned in mystery too high for us, can, throughout 
every instant of time, keep His attentive eye on 



IN DISTANT PLACES OF CREATION. . l^ 

eyery separate thing that He has formed, and, by 
an act of His thodghtful and presiding intelligence, 
can constantly embrace all. 

But God, compassed about as He is with light 
inaccessible, and full of glory, lies so hidden from 
the ken and conception of all our faculties, that 
the spirit of man sinks exhausted by its attempts 
to comprehend Him. Could the image of the 
Supreme be placed direct before the eye of the 
mind, that flood of splendour, which is ever issuing 
from Him on all who have the privilege of behold- , 
ing, would not only dazzle, but overpower us. And 
therefore it is, that we bid you look to the reflection 
of that image, and thus to take a view of its miti- 
gated glories, and to gather the lineaments of the 
Godhead in the face of those righteous angels, who 
have never thrown away from them the resemblance 
in which they were created ; and, unable as you 
are to support the grace and the majesty of that 
countenance, before which the seers and the pro- 
phets of other days fell, and became as dead men, 
let us, before we bring this argument to a close, 
borrow one lesson of Him who sitteth on the throne, 
from the aspect and the revealed doings of those 
wtio are surrounding it. 

The Infidel, then, as he widens the field of his 
contemplations, would suffer its every separate ob- 
ject to die away into forgetfulness : these angels, 
expatiating as they do, over the range of a loftier 
universality, are represented as all awake to the 
history of each of its distinct and subordinate pro- 
vinces. The Infidel, with his mind afloat among 
Buns and among systems, can find no place in hii 



118 SYMPATHY FELT FOR MAN 

already occupied regards, for that humble planet 
which lodges and accoininodates our species : the 
angels, standing on a loftier summit, and with a 
mightier prospect of creation before them, are yet 
represented as looking down on this single world, 
and attentively marking the every feeling and the 
every demand of all its families. The Infidel, by 
sinking ua down to an unnoticeable minuteness, 
would lose sight of our dwelling-place altogether, 
and spread a darkening shroud of oblivion over all 
the concerns and all the interests of men : but the 
angels will not so abandon us; and undazzled by the 
whole surpassing grandeur of that scenery which is 
around them, are they revealed as directing all the 
fulness of their regard to this our habitation, and 
casting a longing and a benignant eye on ourselves 
and on our children. The Infidel will tell us of 
those worlds which roll afar, and the number of 
which outstrips the arithmetic of the human un- 
derstanding — and then, with the hardness of an 
unfeeling calculation, will he consign the one we 
occupy, with all its guilty generations, to despair. 
But He who counts the number of the stars, is set 
forth to us as looking at every inhabitant among 
the millions of our species, and by the word of the 
Gospel beckoning to him with the hand of invitation, 
and on the very first step of his return, as moving 
towards him with all the eagerness of the prodigal's 
father, to receive him back again into that presence 
from, which he had wandered. And as to this 
world, in favour of which the scowling Infidel will 
not permit one solitary movement, all heaven is 
»epresenied as in a sur about its restoration; and 



tl^ DISTANT PLACKS OF CREATION 119 

there cannot a single son, or a single daughter, 
be recalled from sin unto righteousness, without an 
acclamation of joy amongst the hosts of Paradise. 
And we can say it of the humblest and the unwor- 
thiest of you all, that the eye of angels is upon him, 
and that his repentance would, at this moment, 
send forth a wave of delighted sensibility through- 
out the mighty throng of their innumerable legions. 

Now, the single question we have to ask, is, 
On which of the two sides of this contrast do we see 
most of the impress of heaven ? Which of the two 
would be most glorifying to God ? Which of them 
carries upon it most of that evidence which lies in 
its having a celestial character ? For if it be the 
side of-the Infidel, then must all our hopes expire 
with the ratifying of that fatal selitence, by which 
the world is doomed, through its insignifican<'y, to 
perpetual exclusion from the attentions of the God- 
head. We have long been knocking at the door of 
your understanding, and have tried to find an ad- 
mittance to it for many an argument. We now 
make our appeal to the sensibilities of your heart; 
and tell us to whom does the moral feeling within 
it yield its readiest testimony — to the Infidel, who 
would make this world of ours vanish away into 
abandonment — or to those angels, who ring through- 
out all their mansions the hosannas of joy, over 
every one individual of its repentant population ? 

And here we cannot omit to take advantage of 
that opening with which the Saviour has furnished 
U3, by the parables of this chapter, and admits us 
into a familiar view of that prmciple on which the 
inhabitants of heaven are so awake to tne aeliverance 



120 SYMPATHY FELT FOR MAN 

and the restoration of our species. To illustrate 
the ditterence m the reach of knowledge and of 
aflF«ction, between a man and an angel, let us think 
of the difference of reach between one man and 
another. You may often witness a man, who feels 
neither tenderness nor care beyond the precincts of 
his own family ; but who, c n the strength of those 
instinctive fondnesses which nature has implanted 
in his bosom, may earn the character of an amiable 
father, or a kind husband, or a bright example of 
all that is soft and endearing in the relations of 
domestic society. Now conceive hirn, in addition 
to all this, to carry his affections abroad, without, 
at the same time, any abatement of their intensity 
towards tiie objects which are at home — that, step- 
ping across the limits of the house he occupies, he 
takes an interest in the families which arc near him 
• — that he lends his services to the town or the 
district wherein he is placed, and gives up a portion 
of his time to the thoughtful labours of a humane 
and public-spirited citizen. By this enlargement 
in the sphere of his attention, he has extended his 
reach ; and, provided he has not done so at the 
expense of that regard which is due to his family, 
a thing which, cramped and confined as we are, we 
are very apt, in the exercise of our humble faculties, 
to do — I put it to you, whether by extending the 
i)each of his views and bis affections, he has not 
extended his worth and his moral respectability 
along with it? 

But we can conceive a still farther enlargement. 
We can figure to ourselves a man, whose wakeful 
sympathy overflows the field of hia own immediate 



IN DISTANT PLACES OF CREATION. 121 

neighbourhood — to whom the name of coantry 
comes with all the omnipotence of a charm upon 
his heart, and with all the urgency of a most 
righteous and resistless claim upon his services — 
who never hears the name of Britain sounded in 
his ears, but it stirs up all his enthusiasm in behalf 
of the worth and the welfare of its people — who 
gives himself up, with all the devotedness of a 
passion, to the best and the purest objects of 
patriotism — and who, spurning away from him the 
vulgarities of party ambition, separates his life and 
his labours to the fine pursuit of augmenting the 
science, or the virtue, or the substantial prosperity 
of his nation. O ! could such a man retain all the 
tenderness, and fulfil all the duties which home and 
which neighbourhood require of him, and at the 
same time, expatiate in the might of his untired 
faculties, on so wide a field of benevolent contem- 
plation — would not this extension of reach place 
him still higher than before, on the scale both of 
moral and intellectual gradation, and give him a 
still brighter and more enduring name in the records 
of human excellence? 

And, lastly, we can conceive a still loftier 
flight of humanity — a man, the aspiring of whose 
heart for the good of man, knows no limitations— 
whose longings and whose conceptions on this 
subject, overleap all the barriers of geography — 
who, looking on himself as a brother of the species, 
links every spare energy which belongs to him, 
with the cause of its amelioration — who can embrace 
within the grasp of his ample desires, the whole 
family of mankind — and who, in obedience to « 

VOL. VII. F 



122 SYMPATHY FELT FOR MAW 

heaven-born mo\ement of principle withni him, 
separates himself to some big and busy enterprise, 
which is to tell on the moral destinies of the world. 
Could such a man mix up the softenings of private 
virtue, with the habit of so sublime a comprehension 
— if, amid those magnificent darings of thought and 
of performance, the mildness of his benignant eye 
could still continue to cheer the retreat of his family, 
and to spread the charm and the sacredness of 
piety among all its members — could he even mingle 
himself in all the gentleness of a soothed and a 
smiling heart, with the playfulness of his children 
— and also find strength to shed the blessings of 
his presence and his counsel over the vicinity around 
him ; — would not the combination of so much grace 
with so much loftiness, only serve the more to 
aggrandize him ? .Would not the one ingredient 
of a character so rare, go to illustrate and to 
magnify the other? And would not you pro- 
nounce him to be the fairest specimen of our na- 
ture, who could so call out all your tenderness, 
while he challenged and compelled all your venera- 
tion? 

Nor can we proceed, at this point of our argu- 
ment, witliout adverting to the way in which this 
last and this largest style of benevolence is ex- 
emplified in our own country — where the spirit of 
the Gospel has given to many of its enlightened 
disciples, the impulse of such a philanthropy, as 
carries abroad their wishes and their endeavours 
to the very outskirts of human population — a phil- 
antiiropy, of which, if you asked the extent or the 
boundary of its field, we should answer in the 



IN DISTANT PLACES OF CREATION. 123 

language of inspiration, that the field is the world 
—a philanthropy, which overlooks all the distinctiona 
of east and of colour, and spreads its ample regards 
over the whole brotherhood of the species — a 
philanthropy, which attaches itself to man in the 
general; to man throughout all his varieties ; to man 
as the partaker of one common nature, and who, 
in whatever clime or latitude you may meet with 
him, is found to breathe the same sympathies, and 
to possess the same high capabilities both of bliss 
and of improvement. It is true, that, upon this 
subject, there is often a loose and unsettled mag- 
nificence of thought, which is fruitful of nothing 
but empty speculation. But the men to whom we 
allude, have not imaged the enterprise in the form 
of a thing unknown. They have given it a local 
habitation. They have bodied it forth in deed 
and in accomplishment. i hey have turned the 
dream into a reality. In them, the power of a 
lofty generalization meets with its happiest attem- 
perment, in the principle and perseverance, and 
all the chastening and subduing virtues of the New 
Testament. And, were we in search of that fine 
union of grace and of greatness which we have 
now been insisting on, and in virtue of which, the 
enlightened Christian can at once find room in his 
bosom for the concerns of universal humanity, and 
for the play of kindliness towards every individual 
he meets with — we could no where more readily 
expect to find it, than with the worthies of our own 
land — the Howard of a former generation, who 
paced over Europe in quest of the unseen wretch- 
edness which abounds in it — or in such men of ouif 



'i24 SYMPATHY FELT FOR MAN 

present generation, as Wilberforce, who lifted \nt 
unwearied voice against the biggest outrage ever 
practised on our nature, till he wrought its exter- 
mination — and Clarkson, who plied his assiduous 
task at rearing the materials of its impressive 
history, and, at length carried, for this righteous 
cause, the mind of Parliament — and Care}^, from 
whose hand the generations of the East are now 
receiving the elements of their moral renovation — 
and, in fine, those holy and devoted men, who count 
not their lives dear unto them; but, going forth 
every year from the island of our habitation, carry 
the message of heaven over the face of the world ; 
and, in the front of severest obloquy, are now 
labouring in remotest lands; and are reclaiming 
another and another portion from the wastes of 
dark and fallen humanity; and are widening the 
domains of gospel light and gospel principle 
amongst them ; and are spreading a moral beauty 
around the every spot on which they pitched their 
lowly tabernacle; and are at length compelling even 
the eye and the testimony of gainsayers, by the 
success of their noble enterprise ; and ai-e forcing 
the exclamation of delighted surprise from the 
charmed and the arrested traveller, as he looks at 
the softening tints which they are now spreading 
over the wilderness, and as he hears the sound of 
the chapel bell, and as in those haunts where, at 
the distance of half a generation, savages would 
have scowled upon his path, he regales himself with 
the hum of missionary schools, and the lovely spec- 
tacle of peaceful and Christian villages. 

Such, then, is the benevolence, at once so gtiitle 



IN DISTANT PLACES OF CREATION. 125 

and so lofty, of those men, who, sanctiried by tne 
faith that is in Jesus, have had their hearts visited 
from heaven by a beam of warmth and of sacr sdness. 
What, then, we should like to know, is the bene- 
volence of the place from whence such an influence 
Cometh ? How wide is the compass of this virtue 
there, and how exquisite is the feeling of its 
tenderness, and how pure and how fervent are its 
aspirings among those unfallen beings who have no 
darkness, and no encumbering weight of corruption 
to strive against ? Angels have a mightier reach 
of contemplation. Angels can look upon this world 
and all which it inherits, as the part of a larger 
family. Angels were in the full exercise of their 
powers even at the first infancy of our species, and 
shared in the gratulations of that period, when, at 
the birth of humanity, all intelligent nature felt a 
gladdening impulse, and the morning stars sang 
together for joy. They loved us even with the 
iove which a family on earth bears to a younger 
sister; and the very childhood of our tinier faculties 
did only serve the more to endear us to them ; and 
though born at a later hour in the history of 
creation, did they regard us as heirs of the same 
destiny with themselves, to rise along with them in 
the scale of moral elevation, to bow at the same 
footstool, and to partake in those high dispensations 
of a parent's kindness and a parent's care, which 
are ever emanating from the throne of the Eternal 
on all the members of a duteous and affectionate 
family. Take the reach of an angel's mind, but, 
at the same time, take the seraphic fervour of an 
angel's benevolence along with it; liovv, fron: the 



126 SYMPATHY FELT FOR MAN 

earxinence on which he stands, he may haA'e an eye 
upon many worlds, and a remembrance upon the 
origin and the successive concerns of every one of 
them ; how he may feel the full force of a most 
affecting relationship with the inhabitants of each, 
as the offspring of one common Father; and though 
it be both the effect and the evidence of our 
depravity, that we cannot sympathize with these 
pure and generous ardours of a celestial spirit ; how 
it may consist with the lofty comprehension, and the 
ever-breathing love of an angel, that he can both 
shoot his benevolence abroad over a mighty expanse 
of planets and of systems, and lavish a flood of 
tenderness on each individual of their teeming 
population. 

Keep all this in view, and you cannot fail to 
perceive how the principle, so finely and so copiously 
illustrated in this chapter, may be brought to meet 
the infidelity we have thus lone: been employed in 
combating. It was nature, and tiit expevience of 
every bosom will affirm it — it was nature in the 
shepneru to icave the ninety and nine of his flock 
forgotten and alone in the wilderness, and betaking 
himself to the mountains, to give all his labour and 
all his concern to the pursuit of one solitary 
wanderer. It was nature — and we are told in the 
passage before us, that it is such a portion of nature 
as belongs not merely to men, but to angels — when 
the woman, with her mind in a state of listlessness 
as to the nine pieces of silver that were in secure 
custody, turned the whole force of her anxiety to 
the one piece which she had lost, and for which 
6he had to light a candle, and to sweep the house, 



IN niSTAVT PLACES OF CREATION. 12^ 

and to search diligently until she found it. It was 
nature in her to rejoice more over that piece than 
over all the rest of them, and to tell it abroad 
among friends and neighbours, that they might 
rejoice along with her — and sadly effaced as hu- 
manity is, in all her original lineaments, this is a 
part of our nature, the very movements of which 
are experienced in heaven, " where there is more 
joy ov^er one sinner that repenteth, than over ninety 
and nine just persons who need no repentance." 
For any thing we know, every planet that rolls in 
the immensity around us may be a land of right- 
eousness; and be a member of the household of 
God; and have her secure dwelling-place within 
that ample limit, which embraces His great and 
universal family. But we know at least of one wan- 
derer; and how wofully she has strayed from peace 
and from purity ; and how, in dreary alienation from 
Him who made her, she has bewildered herself 
amongst those many devious tracks, which have 
carried her afar from the path of immortality ; and 
how sadly tarnished all those beauties and felicities 
are, which promised, on that morning of her existence 
when God looked on her, and saw that all was very 
good — which promised so richly to bless and to 
adorn her; and how, in the eye of the whole unfallen 
creation, she has renounced all this godliness, and 
is fast departing away from them into guilt, and 
wretchedness, and shame. If there be any truth 
in this chapter, and any sweet or touching nature 
in the principle which runs throughout all its par- 
ables, let us cease to wonder, though they who 
surround the throne of love should be looking so 



r28 SYMPATHY FELT FOR MAM 

intently towards us — or though, in the way b^ 
which they have singled us out, all the other oros 
of space should, for one short season, on the scale 
of eternity, appear to be forgotten — or though, for 
every step of her recovery, and for every individual 
who is rendered back again to the fold from which 
he was separated, another and another message of 
triumph should be made to circulate amongst the 
hosts of paradise — or though, lost as we are, and 
sunk in depravity as we are, all the sympathies of 
heaven should now be awake on the enterprise of 
Him who has travailed, in the greatness of his 
strength, to seek and to save us. 

And here we cannot but remark how line a 
harmony there is between the law of sympathetic 
nature in heaven, and the most touching exhibitions 
of it on the face of our world. When one of a 
numerous household droops under the power ol 
disease, is not that the one to whom all the tender- 
ness is turned, and who, in a manner, monopolises 
the inquiries of his neighbourhood, and the care of 
his family ? When the sighing of the midnight 
storm sends a dismal foreboding into the mother's 
heart, to whom of all her offspring, we would ask, 
are her thoughts and her anxieties then wandering? 
Is it not to her saUor boy whom her fancy has 
placed amid the rude and angry surges of the ocean? 
Does not this, the hour of his apprehended danger, 
concentrate upon him the whole force of her wake- 
ful meditations ? And does not he engross, for a 
season, her every sensibility, and her every prayer? 
W^e sometimes hear of shipwrecked passengers 
thrown upon a barbarous shore ; and seized -jpon 



IN DISTANT PLACES OF CREATION. 129 

by its prowling inhabitants; and hurried away 
through the tracks of a dreary and unknown wil^ 
derness ; and sold into captivity ; and loaded with 
the fetters of irrecoverable bondage ; and who, 
stripped of every other liberty but the liberty of 
thought, feel even this to be another ingredient of 
wretchedness, for what can they think of but home? 
and, as all its kind and tender imagery comes upon 
their remembrance, how can they think of it but in 
the bitterness of despair ? Oh tell us, when the 
fame of all this disaster reaches his family, who is 
the member of it to whom is directed the full tide 
of its griefs and of its sympathies ? Who is it that, 
for weeks and for months, usurps their every feel- 
ing, and calls out their largest sacrifices, and sets 
them to the busiest expedients for getting him back 
again ? Who is it that makes them forgetful of 
themselves and of all around them? and tell us if 
you can assign a limit to the pains, and the exer- 
tions, and the surrenders which afflicted parents 
and weeping sisters would make to seek and to save 
him? 

Now conceive, as we are warranted to do by 
the parables of this chapter, the principle of all 
these earthly exhibitions to be in full operation 
around the throne of God. Conceive the universe 
to be one secure and rejoicing family, and that this 
alienated world is the only strayed, or only captive 
member belonging to it; and we shall cease to 
wonder, that, from the first period of the captivity 
of our species, down to the consummation of their 
history in time, there should be such a movement 
in heaven ; or that angels should so often have sped 
F 2 



130 SYMPATHY FELT FOR MAN 

Iheir commisioned way on the errand of our reco 
very ; or that the Son of God should have bowed 
Himself down to the burden of our mysterious 
atonement; or that the Spirit of God should now, 
by the busy variety of His all-powerful influences, 
be carrying forward that dispensation of grace which 
is to make us meet for re-admittance into the man- 
sions of the celestial. Only think of love as ti'io 
reigning principle there ; of love, as sending forth 
its energies and aspirations to the quarter where 
its object is most in danger of being for ever lost 
to it ; of love, as called forth by this single circum- 
stance to its uttermost exertion, and the most 
exquisite feeling of its tenderness ; and then shall 
we come to a distinct and familiar explanation ot 
this whole mystery : nor shall we resist, by our 
incredulity, the gospel message any longer, though 
it tells us, that throughout the whole of this world's 
history, long in our eyes, but only a little month in 
the high periods of immortality, so much of the 
vigilance, and so much of the earnestness of heaven, 
should have been expended on the recovery of its 
guilty population. 

There is another touching trait of nature, which 
goes finely to heighten this principle, and still 
more forcibly to demonstrate its application to our 
present argument. So long as the dying child of 
David was alive, he was kept on the stretch of 
anxiety and of suffering with regard to it. When 
it expired, he arose and comforted himself. This 
narrative of King David is in harmonj^ with all that 
we experience of our own movements and our own 
sensibilities. It is the power of uncertainty which 



IN DISTANT PLACES OF CREATION. 13 

gives them so active and so interesting a play in 
our bosoms ; and which heightens all our regards 
to a tenfold pitch of feeling and of exercise ; and 
which fixes down our watchfulness upon our infant's 
dying bed ; and which keeps us so painfully alive to 
every turn and to every symptom in the progress 
of its malady ; and which draws out all our affections 
for it to a degree of intensity that is quite unutter- 
able ; and which urges us on to ply our every effort 
and our every expedient, till hope withdraw its 
lingering beam, or till death shut the eyes of our 
beloved in the slumber of its long and its last repose. 
We know not who of you have your names written 
in the book of life — nor can we tell if this be known 
to the angels which are in heaven. While in the 
land of living men, you are under the power and 
application of a remedy, which, if taken as the 
Gospel prescribes, will renovate the soul, and 
altogether prepare it for the bloom and the vigour 
of immortaUty. Wonder not then, that with this 
principle of uncertainty in such full operation, 
ministers should feel for you ; or angels should feel 
for you ; or all the sensibilities of heaven should be 
awake upon the symptoms of your grace and 
reformation ; or the eyes of those who stand upon 
the high eminences of the celestial world, should 
be so earnestly fixed on every footstep and new 
evolution of your moral history. Such a con- 
sideration as this should vdo something more than 
silence the infidel objection. It should give a 
practical effect to the calls of repentance. How 
will it go to aggravate the whole guilt of our 
impenitency, should we stand out against the powei 



132 

and the tenderness of these manifold applieationa 
— the voice of a beseechhig God upon us — the 
word of salvation at our very door — the free offer 
of strength and of acceptance sounded in our hearing 
— the Spirit in readiness with His agency to meet 
our every desire and our every inquiry — angels 
beckoning us to their company — and the very first 
movements of our awakened conscience, drawing 
upon us ail their regards and all their earaestnetis I 



CONTEST FOR ASCENDANCY OVER MAN, &C. 133 



DISCOURSE VI. 

ON THE CONTEST FOR AN ASCENDANCY 

OVER MAN. AMONGST THE HIGHER ORDERS 

OF INTELLIGENCE. 



•' Askit hsring spoiled principalities and powers, he made a show 
A them openly, triumphing over them in it." — Colossiani 
B. 15. 

Though these Discourses be now drawing to a 
close, it is not because we feel that much more 
might not be said on the subject of them, both in 
the way of argument and of illustration. The 
whole of the infidel difficulty proceeds upon the as- 
sumption, that the exclusive bearing of Christianity 
is upon the people of our earth ; that this solitary 
planet is in no way implicated with the concerns of 
a wider dispensation ; that the revelation we have 
of the dealings of God in this district of His empire, 
does not suit and subordinate itself to a system of 
moral administration, as extended as is the whole 
of his monarchy. Or, in other words, because 
Infidels have not access to the whole truth, do they 
refuse a part of it, however well attested or well 
accredited it may be ; because a mantle of deep 
obscurity rests on the government of God, when 
taken in all its eternity and all its entireness, do they 
fehut their eyes against that allowance of light which 
has been made to pass downwards upon our world 



134 CONTEST FOR ASCENDANCY ()Vi;ii M A NT, 

from time to time, through so many partial unfold- 
ings ; and till tliey are made to know the share 
M hich other planets have in these communications 
of mercy, do they turn them away from the actual 
message which has come to their own door, and wil! 
neither examine its credentials, nor be alarmed by 
its warnings, nor be won by the tenderness of its 
mvitations. 

On that day when the secrets of all hearts shall 
be revealed, there will be found such a wilful dupli- 
city and darkening of the mind in the whole of this 
proceeding, as shall bring down upon it tlie burden 
of a righteous condemnation. But even now does 
it lie open to the rebuke of plnlosophy, when the 
soundness and the consistency of lier principles are 
brought faithfully to bear upon it. Were the char- 
acter of modern science rightly understood, it would 
be seen, that the very thing which gave such strength 
and sureness to all her conclusions, was that humi- 
lity of spirit which belonged to her. She promul- 
gates all that is positively known; but she maintains 
the strictest silence and modesty about all that is 
unknown. She thankfully accepts of evidence 
wherever it can be found ; nor does she spurn away 
from her the very humblest contribution of such 
doctrine, as can be witnessed by human observation, 
or can be attested by human veracity. But with 
all this she can hold out most sternly against that 
power of eloquence and fancy, which often throws 
80 bewitching a charm over the plausibilities of 
ingenious speculation. Truth is the alone object 
of her reverence ; and did she at all times keep by 
her attachments, nor throw them away when theo« 



AMONG THE HIGHEK INTELLIGENCES. 13A 

logy submitted to her cognizance its demonstrationa 
and its claims, we should not despair of witnessing 
as great a revolution in those prevailing habitudes 
of thought which obtain throughout our literary 
establishments, on the subject of Christianity, as 
that which has actually taken place in the views 
which obtain on the philosophy of external nature. 
This is the first field on which have been success- 
fully practised the experimental lessons of Bacon ; 
and they who are conversant with these matters, 
know how great and how general a uniformity of 
doctrine now prevails in the sciences of astronomy, 
and mechanics, and chemistry, and almost all the 
other departments in the history and philosophy of 
matter. But this uniformity stands strikingly con- 
trasted with the diversity of our moral systems, 
with the restless fluctuations both of language and 
of sentiment which are taking place in the philosophy 
of mind, with the palpable fact, that every new 
course of instruction upon this subject, has some 
new articles, or some new explanations to pecuUarize 
it : and all this is to be attributed, not to the pro- 
gress of the science, not to a growing, but to an 
alternating movement, not to its perpetual addi- 
tions, but to its perpetual vibrations. 

We mean not to assert the futility of moral 
science, or to deny her importance, or to insist on 
the utter hopelessness of her advancement. The 
Baconian method will not probably push forward 
her discoveries with such a rapidity, or to such an 
extent, as many of her sanguine disciples have 
anticipated. But if the spirit and the maxims of 
this philosophy were at all times proceeded upon, 



136 CONTEST FOR ASCENDANCY OVER MAN. 

it would certainly check that rashness and variety 
of excogitation, in virtue of which it may almost be 
said, that every new course presents us with a new 
system, and that every new teacher has seme 
singularity or other to characterize him. She laay 
be able to make out an exact transcript of the phe- 
nomena of mind, and in so doing, she yields a most 
important contribution to the stock of human 
acquirements. But, when she attempts to grope 
her darkling way through the counsels of the Deity, 
and the futurities of His administration ; when, 
without one passing acknowledgment to the embassy 
which professes to have come from him, or to the 
facts and to the testimonies by which it has so 
illustriously been vindicated, she launches forth her 
own speculations on the character of God^ and the 
destiny of man ; when, though this be a subject on 
which neither the recollections of history, nor the 
ephemeral experience of any single life, can furnish 
one observation to enlighten her, she will never- 
theless utter her own plausibilities, not merely with 
a contemptuous neglect of the Bible, but in direct 
opposition to it ; then it is high time to remind her 
of the difference between the reverie of him who 
has not seen God, and the well-accredited declara- 
tion of him who was in the beginning with God, and 
was God; and to tell her, that this, so far from 
being the argument of an ignoble fanaticism, is in 
harmony with the very argument upon which the 
science of experiment has been reared, and by which 
it has been at length delivered from the influence 
of theory, and purified of all its vain and visionary 
splendours. 



AMONG THE HIGHER INTELLIGENCES. 137 

In our last Discourses, we have attempted to 
collect, from the records of God's actual communi- 
cation to the world, such traces of relationship 
between other orders of being and the great family 
of mankind, as serve to prove that Christianity is 
not so paltry and provincial a system as Infidelity 
presumes it to be. And as we said before, we 
have not exhausted all that may legitimately be 
derived upon this subject from the informations of 
Scripture. We have adverted, it is true, to the 
knowledge of our moral history which obtains 
throughout other provinces of the intelligent crea- 
tion. We have asserted the universal importance 
which this may confer on the transactions even of 
one planet, in as much as it may spread an honour- 
able display of the .Godhead amongst all the man- 
sions of infinity. We have attempted to expatiate 
on the argunient, that an event little in itself, may 
be so pregnant with character, as to furnish all the 
worshippers of heaven with a theme of praise for 
eternity. We have stated that nothing is of mag- 
nitude in their eyes, but that which serves to endear 
to them the Father of their spirits, or to shed a 
lustre over the glory of His incomprehensible 
attributes — and that thus, from the redemption even 
of our solitary species, there may go forth such an 
exhibition of the Deity, as shall bear the triumphs 
of His name to the very outskirts of the universe. 

We have farther adverted to another distinct 
Scriptural intimation, that the state of fallen man 
was not only matter of knowledge to other orders 
of creation, but was also matter of deep regret and 
affectionate sympathy ; that agreeably to such laws 



138 CONTEST FOR ASCENDANCY OVER MAN, 

of sympathy as are most familiar even to human 
observation, the very wretchedness of our condition 
was fitted to concentrate upon us the feeUngs, and 
the attentions, and the services of the celestial — to 
single us out for a time to the gaze of their most 
earnest and unceasing contemplation — to draw forth 
all that was kind and all that was tender within 
them — and just in proportion to the need and to the 
helplessness of us miserable exiles from the family 
of God, to multiply upon us the regards, and call 
out in our behalf the fond and eager exertions of 
those who had never wandered away from Him, 
This appears from the Bible to be the style of that 
benevolence which glows and which circulates 
around the throne of heaven. It is the very bene- 
volence which emanates from the throne itself, and 
the attentions of which have for so many thousand 
years signalized the inhabitants of our world. This 
may look a long period for so paltry a world. 
But how have Infidels come to their conception 
that our world is so paltry ? By looking abroad 
over the countless systems of immensity. But why 
then have they missed the conception, that the time 
of those peculiar visitations, which they look upon 
as so disproportionate to the magnitude of this 
earth, is just as evanescent as the earth itself is 
insignificant ? Why look they not abroad on the 
countless generations of eternity ; and thus come 
back to the conclusion, that after all, the redemption 
of our species is but an ephemeral doing in the 
history of intelligent nature; that it leaves the 
Author of it room for all the accomplishments of a 
wise and equal administration ; and not to mention, 



AMONG THE HIGHER INTELLIGENCES. 139 

that, even during the progress of it, it withdraws not 
a single thought or a single energy of His, from 
other fields of creation, that there remains timo 
enough to Him for carrying round the visitations of 
as striking and as peculiar a tenderness, over the 
whole extent of His great and universal monarchy? 
It might serve still farther to incorporate the 
concerns of our planet with the general history of 
moral and intelligent beings, to state, not merely 
the knowledge which they take of us, and not merely 
the compassionate anxiety which they feel for us ; 
but to state the importance derived to our world 
from its being the actual theatre of a keen and 
ambitious contest amongst the upper orders of crea- 
tion. You know that for the possession of a very 
small and insu. ated territory, the mightiest empires 
of the world have put forth all their resources; 
and on some field of mustering competition, have 
monarchs met, and embarked for victory, all the 
pride of a counti-y's rank, and all the flower and 
strength of a country's population. The solitary 
island around which so many fleets are hovering, 
and on the shores of which so many armed men are 
descending as to an arena of hostility, may well 
wonder at its own unlooked-for estimation. But 
other principles are animating the battle ; and the 
glory of nations is at stake ; and a much higher 
result is in the contemplation of each party, than 
the gain of so humble an acquirement as the primary 
object of the war ; and honour, dearer to many a 
bosom than existence, is now the interest on v/hich 
Bo much blood and so much treasure is experded; 
and the stirring spirit of emulation has now gci 



»40 CONTEST FOR ASCENDANCY OVER MAN, 

hold of the combatants; and thus, amid all th« 
insignificancy which attaches to the material origia 
of the contest, do both the eagerness and the extent 
of it, receive from the constitution of our nature, 
their most full and adequate explanation. 

Now, if this be also the principle of higher natures 
— if, on the one hand, God be jealous of his honour ; 
and, on the other, there be proud and exalted spirits 
who scowl defiance at Him and at His monarchy 
— if, on the side of heaven, there be an angeUc host 
rallying around the standard of loyalty, who flee with 
alacrity at the bidding of the Almighty, who are 
devoted to His glory, and feel a rejoicing interest 
in the evolution of His counsels ; and if, on the side 
of hell, there be a sullen front of resistance, a hate 
and maUce inextinguishable, an unquelled daring of 
revenge to baffle the wisdom of the Eternal, and %o 
arrest the hand, and to defeat the purposes of Omni- 
potence — then let the material prize of victory be 
insignificant as it may, it is the victory in itself which 
upholds the impulse of this keen and stimulated 
rivalry. If, by the sagacity of one infernal mind, 
a single planet has been seduced from its allegiance, 
and been brought under the ascendancy of him who 
is called in Scripture, "the god of this world;" 
and if the errand on which our Redeemer came, 
was to destroy the works of the devil — then let this 
planet have all the littleness which astronomy has 
assigned to it — call it what it is, one of the smaller 
islets which float on the ocean of vacancy ; it haa 
become the theatre of such a competition, as may 
have all the desires and all the energies of a divided 
universe embarked upon it. It involves in it other 



AMONG THE HIGHER INTELLIGENCES. 14 1 

objects than the single recovery of our species. It 
decides higher questions. It stands hnked with 
the supremacy of God, and will at length demon- 
strate the way in which He inflicts chastisement 
and overthrow upon all His enemies. We know- 
not if our rebellious world be the only stronghold 
which Satan is possessed of, or if it be but the single 
post of an extended warfare, that is now going on 
between the powers of light and of darkness. But 
be it the one or the other, the parties are in array, 
and the spirit of the contest is in full energy, and 
the honour of mighty combatants is at stake ; and 
let us therefore cease to wonder that our humble 
residence has been made the theatre of so busy an 
operation, or that the ambition of loftier natures has 
here put forth all its desire and all its strenuousness. 
This unfolds to us another of those high and 
extensive bearings, which the moral history of our 
globe may have on the system of God's universal 
administration. Were an enemy to touch the shore 
of this high-minded country, and to occupy so much 
as one of the humblest of its villages, and there to 
seduce the natives from their loyalty, and to sit 
down along with them in entrenched defiance to all 
the threats, and to all the preparations of an in- 
sulted empii-e — how would the cry of woundei pride 
resound throughout all the ranks and varieties of 
our mighty population ; and this very movement of 
indignancy would reach the king upon his throne ; 
and circulate among those who stood in all the 
grandeur of chieftainship around him ; and be heard 
to thrill in the eloquence of parliament ; and spread 
80 resistless an appeal to a nation's honour, and a 



1-42 CONTEST FOR ASCENDAVCY OVER MAN, 

cation's patriotism, that the trumpet of war would 
summon to its call all the spirit and all the willing 
energies of our kingdom ; and rather than sit down 
in patient endurance under the burning disgrace oJl 
such a violation, would the whole of its strength 
and resources be embarked upon the contest ; and 
never, never would we let down oiir exertions and 
our sacrifices, till either our deluded countrymen 
were reclaimed, or till the whole of this offence 
w-ere, by one righteous act of vengeance, swept 
away altogether fuom the face of the territory it 
deformed. 

The Bible is always most full and most explan- 
atory on those points of revelation in which men 
are personally interested. But it does at times 
offer a dim transparency, through which may be 
caught a partial view of such designs and of such 
enterprises as ai'e now afloat among the upper 
orders of intelligence. It tells us of a mighty 
struggle that is now going on for a moral ascend- 
ancy over the hearts of this world's population. It 
tells us that our race were seduced from their al- 
legiance to God, by the plotting sagacity of one 
who stands pre-eminent against Him, among the 
hosts of a very wide and extended rebellion. It 
tells us of the Captain of salvation, who undertook 
to spoil him of this triumph ; and throughout the 
whole of that magnificent train of prophecy which 
points to Him, does it describe the work he had to 
do, as a conflict, in which strength was to be put 
forth, and pahiful suffering to be endured, and fury 
to be poured upon enemies, and principalities to ))« 
dethroned, and all those toils, and dangers, and 



AMONG THE HIGHER, INTELLIGENCES. 14^ 

difficulties to be borne, which strewed the path oi 
perseverance that was to carry him to victory. 

But it is a contest of skill, as well as of strength 
and of influence. There is the earnest competi- 
tion of angelic faculties embarked on this struggle 
for ascendancy. And Mobile in the Bible there is 
recorded, (faintly and partially, we admit,) the deep 
and insidious policy that is practised on the on© 
side ; we are also told, that, on the plan of our 
world's restoration, there are lavished all the riches 
of an unsearchable wisdom upon the other. It 
would appear that, for the accomplishment of hia 
purpose, the great enemy of God and of man pli^O 
his every calculation ; and brought all the devices 
of his deep and settled malignity to bear upon our 
species ; and thought, that could he involve us iu 
sin, every attribute of the Divinity stood staked to 
the banishment of our race from beyond the limits 
of the empire of righteousness ; and, thus did he 
practise his invasions on the moral territory of the 
imfallen ; . and, glorying in his success, did he 
fancy and feel that he had achieved a permanent 
separation between the God who sitteth in heaven, 
and one at least of the planetary mansions which 
He had reared. 

The errand of the Saviour was to restore this 
sinful world, and have its people re-admitted within 
the circle of heaven's pure and righteous family. 
But in the government of heaven, as well as in the 
government of earth, there are certain principles 
which cannot be, compromised ; and certain maxims 
of administration which must never be departed 
from ; and a certain character of majesty and oi 



44 CONTEST FOR ASCENDANCY OVEU MAN, 

truth, on which the taint even of the slightest A'ioIa«» 
tion can never be permitted; and a certain authority 
which must be upheld by the immutability of all its 
sanctions, and the unerring fulfilment of all its wise 
and righteous proclamations. All this was in the 
mind of the archangel, and a gleam of malignant 
joy shot athwart him, as he conceived his project 
for iiemming our unfortunate species within the 
bound of an irrecoverable dilemma; and as surely 
as sin and holiness could not enter into fellowship, 
BO surely did he think, that if man were seduced to 
disobedience, would the truth, and the justice, and 
the immutability of God, lay their insurmountable 
barriers on the path of his future acceptance. 

It was only in that plan of recovery of which 
Jesus Christ was the author and the finisher, that 
the great adversary of our species met with a wisdom 
which overmatched him. It is true, that he had 
reared, in the guilt to which he seduced us, a mighty 
obstacle in the way of this lofty undertaking. But 
when the grand expedient was announced, and the 
blood of that atonement, by which sinners are 
brought nigh, was willingly offered to be shed for 
us ; and the eternal Son, to carry this mystery intc 
accomplishment, assumed our nature — then was the 
prince of that mighty rebellion, in which the fats 
and the history of our world are so deeply impli- 
cated, in visible alarm for the safety of all his ac- 
quisitions: — nor can the record of this wondrouj4 
historj' carry forward its narrative, without furnish- 
ing some transient glimpses of a sublime and d 
superior warfare, in which, for the prize of a 
spiritual dominion over our species, we may dimly 



AMONG THE HIGHER INTELLIGENCES. 145 

perceive the contest of loftiest talent, and all the 
designs of heaven in behalf of man, met at every 
point of their evolution, by the counter workings of 
a rival strength and a rival sagacity. 

We there read of a struggle which the Captain 
of our salvation had to sustain, when the lustre of 
the Godhead lay obscured, and the strength of its 
omnipotence was mysteriously weighed down under 
the infirmities of our nature — how Satan singled 
Him out, and dared Him to the combat of the 
wilderness — how all his wiles and all his influenees 
were resisted — how he left our Saviour in all the 
triumphs of unsubdued loyalty — how the progress 
of this mighty achievement is marked by every 
character of a conflict — how many of the gospel 
miracles were so many direct infringements on the 
power and empire of a great spiritual rebellion — 
how, in one precious season of gladness among the 
few which brightened the dark career of our Saviour's 
humiliation, He rejoiced in spirit, and gave as the 
cause of it to his disciples, that "he saw Satan fall 
like lightning from heaven"-^how the momentary ad- 
vantages that were gotten over Him, are ascribed 
to the agency of this infernal being, who entered 
the heart of Judas, and tempted the disciple to 
betray His Master and His Friend. We know 
that we are treading on the confines of mystery, 
We cannot tell what the battle that he fought. 
We cannot compute the terror or the strength of 
his enemies. We cannot say, for we have not beea 
told, how it was that they stood in marshalled and 
hideous array against Him : — nor can we measarti 
how great the firm daring of His soul, when He 

VOL. VII. G 



46 CONTEST FOR AICE9DANCY OVER MAW, 

tasted that cup in all its bitterness, which he prajr-i 
ed might pass away from Him ; when, with the 
feeling that He was forsaken by His God, He trod 
the wine-press alone ; when He entered single- 
handed upon that dreary period of agony, and in- 
sult, and death, in which, from the garden to the 
cross, He had to bear the burden of a world's atone- 
ment. We cannot speak in our own language, 
but we can say, in the language of the Bible, of the 
days and the nights of this great enterprise, that it 
was the season of the travail of His soul ; that it 
was the hour and the power of darkness ; that the 
w^rk of our redemption, was a work accompanied 
by the effort, and the violence, and the fury of a 
combat ; by all the arduousness of a battle in its 
progress, and all the glories of a victory in its ter- 
mination : and after He called out that it was 
finished, after He was loosed from the prison-house 
cf the grave, after He had ascended up on high, He 
is said to have made captivity captive ; and to have 
spoiled principalities and powers ; and to have seen 
His pleasure upon His enemies ; and to have made 
a show of them openly. 

We shall not affect a wisdom above that which 
is written, by fancying such details of this warfare 
as the Bible has not laid before us. But surely it is 
t:o more than being wise up to that which is written, 
10 assert, that in achieving the redemption of our 
wcrld, a warfare had to be accomplished ; that 
•ijpcn this subject there was, among the higJier 
provinces of creation, the keen and the animated 
conflict of opposing interests ; that the result of it 
vuvolved something grander and more affecting, 



AMONG THE HIGHER INTELLIGENCES. 147 

than even the fate of this world's population : that 
it decided a question of rivalship between the 
righteous and everlasting Monarch of universal 
being, and the prince of a great and widely-extended 
rebellion, of which we neither know how vast is the 
magnitude, nor how important and diversified are 
the bearings : and thus do we gather, from this con- 
sideration, another distinct argument, helping us to 
explain why, on the salvation of our solitary species, 
so much attention appears to have been concentrated, 
and so much energy appears to have been expended. 
But it would appear from the Records of In- 
spiration, that the contest is not yet ended ; that 
on the one hand the Spirit of God is employed in 
making, for the truths of Christianity, a way into 
the human heart, with all the power of an effectual 
demonstration ; that on the other, there is a spirit 
now abroad, which worketh in the children of dis- 
obedience : that on the one hand, the Holy Ghost 
is calling men out of darkness into the marvellous 
light of the Gospel ; and that on the other hand, he 
who is styled the god of this world, is blinding their 
hearts, lest the light of the glorious Gospel of 
Christ should enter into them ; that they who are 
under the dominion of the one, are said to have 
overcome, because greater is He that is in them 
than he that is in the world ; and that they who are 
under the dominion of the other, are said to be ths 
children of the devil, and to be under a snare, and 
to be taken captive by him at his will. How thesa 
respective powers do operate, is one question. TKs 
fact of their operation, is another. We abstain 
from the former. We attach ourselves to the lar- 



148 CONTEST FOR ASCENDANCY OVER MAN, 

ter, and gather from it, that the prince of darknesa 
still walketh abroad amongst us ; that he is ftill 
Moi'king his insidious policy, if not with the vigor- 
ous inspiration of hope, at least with the frantic 
energies of despair ; that while the overtures of 
reconciliation are made to circulate through the 
world, he is plying all his devices to deafen and to 
extinguish the impression of them ; or, in other 
words, while a process of invitation and of argument 
has emanated from heaven, for reclaiming men to 
their loyalty — the process is resisted at all its points, 
by one who is putting forth his every expedient, 
and wielding a mysterious ascendancy, to seduce 
and to enthrall them. 

To an infidel ear, all this carries the sound of 
something wild and visionary along with it. But 
though only known through the medium of revel- 
ation ; after it is known, who can fail to recognize 
its harmony with the great lineaments of human 
experience ? Who has not felt the workings of a 
rivalry within him, between the power of conscience 
and the power of temptation ? Who does not remem- 
ber those seasons of retirement, when the calcula- 
tions of eternity had gotten a momentary command 
over the heart; and time, with all its interests 
and all its vexations, had dwindled into insignifi- 
cancy before them? And who does not remember, 
how, upon his actual engagement with the objects of 
t-'me, they resumed a control, as great and as omni- 
potfcnt, as if all the importance of eternity adhered 
to them — how they emitted from them such an im- 
pression upon his feelings, as to fix and to fascinate 
the whole man into a subserviency to their influence 



AMON'i THE HIGHER INTELLIGENCES. 149 

— how, in spite of every lesson of their worthless, 
ness, brought home to him at every turn by the 
rapidity of the seasons, and the vicissitudes of life, 
and the ever-moving progress of his own earthly 
career, and the visible ravages of death among his 
acquaintances around him, and the desolations of 
his family, and the constant breaking up of hia 
system of friendships, and the affecting spectacle 
of all that lives and is in motion, withering and 
hastening to the grave ; — ^how comes it, that, in the 
face of all this experience, the whole elevation of 
purpose, conceived in the hour of his better un- 
derstanding, should be dissipated and forgotten ? 
Whence the might, and whence the mystery of 
that spell, which so binds and so infatuates us to 
the world ? What prompts us so to embark the 
whole strength of our eagerness and of our desires, 
in pursuit of interests which we know a few little 
years will bring to utter annihilation ? Who is it 
that imparts to them all the charm and all the 
colour of an unfailing durability ? Who is it that 
throws such an air of stability over these earthly 
tabernacles, as makes them look to the fascinated 
eye of man, like resting-places for eternity ? Who 
is it that so pictures out the objects of sense, and 
so magnifies the range of their future enjoyment, 
and so dazzles the fond and deceived imagination, 
that, in looking onward through our earthly career, 
it appears like the vista, or the perspective, of in- 
numerable ages ? He who is called the god of this 
world. He who can dress the idleness of its wak- 
ing dreams in the garb of reality. He who can 
pour a seducing brilliancy over the panorama of its 



150 CONTEST FOR ASCENDANCY OVEIl MAN, 

ileeting pleasures and its vain anticipations. He 
who can turn it into an instrument of deceitfulness ; 
and make it wield such an absohite ascendancy over 
all the affections, that man, become the poor slave 
of its idolatries and its charms, puts the authority 
of conscience and the warnings of the Word of God, 
and the offered instigations of the Spirit of God, 
and all tiie lessons of calculation, and all the wis- 
dom even of his own sound and sober experience, 
away from him. 

But this wondrous contest will come to a close. 
Some will return to their loyalty, and others will 
keep by their rebellion ; and, in the day of tho 
winding up of the drama of this world's history, 
there will be made manifest to the myriads of the 
various orders of creation, both the mercy and 
vhidicated majesty of the Eternal. On that day, 
how vain will this presumption of the infidel as- 
tronomy appear, when the affairs of men come to 
be examined in the presence of an innumerable 
company ; and beings of loftiest nature are seen to 
crowd around the judgment-seat ; and the Saviour 
shall appear in our sky, with a celestial retinue, who 
have come with him from afar to witness all His 
doings, and to take a deep and solemn interest in 
all His dispensations; and the destiny of our species 
whom the Infidel would thus detach in solitary in- 
significance, from the universe altogether, shall be 
found to merge and to mingle with higher destinie* 
— the good to spend their eternity with angels — 
the bad to spend their eternity with angels — the 
former to be re-admitted into the universal family 
of God's obtuient worshippers — the latter to share 



AMONG THE HIGHER INTELLIGENCES. 151 

in the everlasting pain and ignominy of the defeated 
hosts of the rebelUous — the people of this planet to 
be implicated, throughout the whole train of their 
never-ending history, with the higher ranks, and 
tiie more extended tribes of intelligence : And thus 
it is, that the special administration we now live 
under, shall be seen to harmonize in its bearings, 
and to accord in its magnificence, with all that ex- 
tent of nature and of her territories, which modera 
Mi<»>ee has unfolded. 



152 SLENDER INFLUENCE OF TASTE 



DISCOURSE VII. 

ON THIS SLENDER INFLUENCE OF MERE 
TASTE AND SENSIBILITY IN MATTERS OP 
RELIGION. 



" And, lo 1 thou art unto them as a very lovely song of od» thai 
hath a pleasant voice, and can play well on an instrument : for 
they hear thy words, but they do them not.'' — Ezek. xxxiii, 32. 

Yo€ easily understand how a taste for music is one 
thing, and a real submission to the influence of 
religion is another — how the ear may be regaled by 
the melody of sound, and the heart may utterly 
refuse the proper impression of the sense that ia 
conveyed by it — how the sons and daughters of the 
world may, with their every affection devoted to its 
perishable vanities, inhale all the delights of en- 
thusiasm, as they sit in crowded assemblage around 
the deep and solemn oratorio — and whether it be 
the humility of penitential feeling, or the rapture 
of grateful acknowledgment, or the sublime of a 
contemplative piety, or the aspiration of pure and 
of holy purposes, which breathes throughout the 
words of the performance, and gives to it all the 
spirit and all the expression by which it is pervaded; 
it is a very possible thing, that the moral, and the 
rational, and the active man, may have given no 
entrance into his bosom for any of these sentiments; 
and yet so overpowered may he be by the charm of 
the vocal conveyance through which they are y4- 



IN MATTERS OF RELIGION. 15 

dressed to him, that he may be made to feel with 
such an emotion, and to weep with such a tender^ 
ness, and to kindle with such a transport, and to 
glow with such an elevation, as may one and ail 
carry upon them the semblance of sacredness. 

But might not this semblance deceive him ? Have 
you never heard any tell, and with complacency 
too, how powerfully his devotion was awakened by 
an act of attendance on the oratorio — how his 
heart, melted and subdued by the influence of 
harmony, did homage to all the religion of which 
it was the vehicle — how he was so moved and 
overborne, as to shed the tears of contrition, and 
to be agitated by the terrors cf judgment, and to 
receive an awe upon his spirit of the greatness and 
the majesty of God — and that, wrought up to the 
lofty pitch of eternity, he could look down upon the 
world, and by the glance of one commanding survey, 
pronounce upon the littleness and the vanity of all 
its concerns ? It is indeed very possible that all 
this might thrill upon the ears of the man, and 
circulate a succession of solemn and affecting 
images around his fancy — and yet that essential 
principle of his nature, upon which the practical 
influence of Christianity turns, might have met with 
no reaching and no subduing efficacy whatever to 
arouse it. He leaves the exhibition, as dead in 
trespasses and sins as he came to it. Conscience 
has not wakened upon him. Repentance has not 
turned him. Faith has not made any positive 
lodgement within him of her great and her con- 
straining realities. He speeds him back to his 
business and to his family, and there he acts the 



154 SLENDER INFLUENCE OF TASTE 

old man In all the entireness of his uncrucified 
temper, and of his obstinate worldliness, and of 
all those earthly and unsanctified affectioni« which 
are found to cleave to him with as great tenacity 
as ever. He is really and experimentally the very 
same man as before — and all those sensibilities 
which seemed to bear upon them so much of the 
air and unction of heaven, are found to go into 
dissipation, and be forgotten with the loveliness of 
the song. 

Amid all that illusion which such momentary 
risitations of seriousness and of sentiment throvf 
around the character of man, let us never lose sight 
of the test, that " by their fruits ye shall know 
them." It is not coming up to this test, that you 
hear and are delighted. It is that you hear and 
do. This is the ground upon which the reality of 
your religion is discriminated now ; and on the day 
of reckoning, this is the ground upon which your 
religion will be judged then ; and that award is to 
be passed upon you, which will fix and perpetuate 
your destiny for ever. You have a taste for music. 
This no more implies the hold and the ascendancy 
of religion over you, than that you have a taste for 
beautiful scenery, or a taste for painting, or even a 
taste for the sensualities of epicurism. But music 
may be made to express the glow and the move- 
ment of devotional feeling; and is it saying nothing 
to say that the heart of him who listens with a 
raptured ear, is, through the whole time of the 
performance, in harmony with such a movement? 
Why, it is saying nothing to the purpose. Music 
may lift the inspiring note of patriotism : and the 



IN MATTERS OF RELIGION. 155 

inspiration may be felt ; and it may thrill over the 
recesses of the soul, to the mustering up of all its 
energies ; and it may sustain to the last cadence of 
(he song, the firm nerve and purpose of intrepidity ; 
and ail this may be realized upon him, who, in the 
day of battle and upon actual collision with the 
dangers of it, turns out to be a coward. And 
music may lull the feelings into unison with piety; 
and stir up the inner man to lofty determinations ; 
and so engage for a time his affections, that, as if 
weaned from the dust, they promise an immediate 
entrance on some great and elevated career, which 
may carry him through his pilgrimage superior to all 
the sordid and grovelling enticements that abound 
in it. But he turns him to the world, and all this 
glow abandons him ; and the words which he had 
heard, he doeth them not; and in the hour of 
temptation he turns out to be a deserter from the 
law of allegiance; and the test we have now specified 
looks hard upon him, and discriminates him amid 
all the parading insignificance of his fine but fugitive 
emotions, to be the subject both of present guilt 
and of future vengeance. 

The faithful application of this test would put 
to flight a host of other delusions. It may be 
carried round amongst all those phenomena of 
human character, where there is the exhibition 
of something associated with religion, but which is 
not religion itself. An exquisite relish for music 
is no test of the influence of Christianity. Neither 
are many other of the exquisite sensibihties of our 
nature. When a kind mother closes the eyes of her 
expiring babe, she is thrown into a flood of sensi* 



156 SLENDER INFLUENCE OF TASTE 

bility, and soothing to her heart are the sympathy 

and the prayers of an attending minister. When 
a gathering neighbourhood assemble to the funera, 
of an acquaintance, one pervading sense of regret 
and tenderness sits on the faces of the company ; 
and the deep silence, broken only by the solemn 
utterance of the man of God, carries a kind of 
pleasing religiousness along with it. The sacred- 
ness of the hallowed day, and all the decencies of 
its observation, may engage the affections of him 
who loves to walk in the footsteps of his father; 
and every recurring Sabbath may bring to his bosom 
the charm of its regularity and its quietness. Re- 
ligion has its accompaniments ; and in these thern 
may be a something to sooth and to fascinate, even 
in the absence of the appropriate influences of re- 
ligion. The deep and tender impression of a family 
bereavement, is not religion. The love of estab- 
lished decencies, is not religion. The charm of all 
that sentimentalism which is associated with many 
of its solemn and affecting services, is not religion. 
They may form the distinct folds of its accustomed 
drapery ; but they do not, any, or all of them put 
together, make up the substance of the thing itself. 
A mother's tenderness may flow most gracefully 
over the tomb of her departed little one ; and she 
may talk the while of that heaven whither its spirit 
has ascended. The man whom death hath widow- 
ed of his friend, may abandon himself to the move- 
ments of that grief, which for a time will claim an 
ascendancy over him ; and, amongst the multitude 
of his other reveries, may love to hear of the 
eternity, where sorrow and separation are alik« 



IN MATTERS OF RELIGION. 161 

unknown. He who has been trained from hia 

infant days to remember the Sabbath, may love 
the holiness of its aspect, and associate himself with 
all its observances, and take a delighted share in 
the mechanism of its forms. But let not these think, 
because the tastes and the sensibilities which en- 
gross them, may be blended with religion, that they 
indicate either its strength or its existence within 
them. We recur to the test. We press its im- 
perious exactions upon you. We call for fruit, 
and demand the permanency of a religious influence 
on the habits and the history. How many who 
take a flattering unction to their souls, when they 
think of their amiable feelings, and their becoming 
observations, with whom this severe touchstone 
would, like the head of Medusa, put to flight all 
their complacency ! The afflictive dispensation is 
forgotten — and he on whom it was laid, is practi- 
cally as indiff*erent to God and to eternity as before. 
The Sabbath services come to a close, and they 
are followed by the same routine of week-day 
worldliness as before. In neither the one case nor 
the other, do we see more of the radical influence 
of Christianity, than in the sublime and melting in- 
fluence of sacred music upon the soul ; and all this 
tide of emotion is found to die away from the bosom, 
like the pathos or like the loveliness of a song. 

The instances may be multiplied without number. 
A man may have a taste for eloquence, and elo- 
quence the most touching or sublime may lift her 
pleading voice on the side of religion. A man 
may love to have his understanding stimulated by 
the ingenuities, or the resistless urgencies of an ar- 



158 SLENDER INFLUENCE OF TASTE 

giiment ; and argument the most profound and the 
roost over-bearing, may put forth all the might of 
i. constraining vehemence in behalf of religion. A 
man may feel the rejoicings of a conscious elevation, 
when some ideal scene of magnificence is laid be« 
fore him ; and where are these scenes so readily to 
be met with, as when led to expatiate in thought 
over the track of eternity, or to survey the wondcra 
of creation, or to look to the magnitude of those 
great and universal interests which lie v/ithin the 
compass of religion ? A man may have his attan- 
tion riveted and regaled by that power of imi*,a- 
tive description, which brings all the recollections 
of his own experience before him ; which pi'esents 
him with a faithful analysis of his own heart; which 
embodies in language such intimacies, of observa- 
tion and of feeling, as have often passed before his 
eyes, or played within his bosom, but had never 
been so truly or so ably pictured to the view of his 
remembrance. Now, all this may be done in the 
work of pressing the duties of religion ; in the work 
of instancing the applications of religion ; in the 
work of pointing those allusions to life and to man- 
ners, which manifest the truth to the conscience, and 
plant such a conviction of sin, as forms the very 
basis of a sinner's religion. Now, in all these 
cases, we see other principles brought into action, 
and w hich may be in a state of most lively and vig- 
orous movement, and be yet in a state of entire 
separation from the principle of religion. We will 
venture to say, on the strength of these illustrations, 
that as much delight may emanate from the pulpit 
on an arrested audience beneath it, as ever emao* 



IN MATTERS OF RELIGION. 159 

ated from the boards of a theatre — and with as 
total a disjunction of mind too, in the one case as 
in the other, from the essence or the habit of re- 
ligion. We lecur to the test. We make our 
appeal to experience ; and we put it to you ail, 
whether your finding upon the subject do not agree 
with our saying about it, that a man may weep and 
admire, and have many -A his faculties put upon 
the stretch of their most intense gratification — his 
judgment established, and his fancy enlivened, and 
his feelings overpowered, and his hearing charmed 
as by the accents of heavenly persuasion, and all 
within him feasted by the rich and varied luxuries 
of an intellectual banquet ! — Oh ! .it is cruel to 
frown unmannerly in the midst of so much satis- 
faction. But I must not forget that truth has her 
authority, as well as her sternness ; and she forces 
me to aifirm, that after all this has been felt and 
gone through, there might not be one principle 
which lies at the turning-point of conversion, 
that has experienced a single movement — not one 
of its purposes be conceived — not one of its doings 
be accomplished — not one step of that repentance, 
which, if we have not, we perish, so much as enter- 
ed upon — not one announcement of that faith, by 
which we are saved, admitted into a real and ac- 
tual possession by the inner man. He has had his 
hour's entertainment, and willingly does he award 
thishomage to the performer, that he hath a pleasant 
voice, and can play well on an instrument — but, in 
another hour, it fleets away from his remembrance, 
and goes all to nothing, like the loveliness of a song 
Now, in bringing these Discourses to a close, 



l60 SLENDER INFLUENCE OF TASTE 

we feel it our duty to advert to this exhibition oi 
character in man. The subUme and interesting 
topic which has engaged us, however feebly it may 
have be«n handled ; however inadequately it* may 
have been put in all its worth, and in all its mag- 
nitude before you ; however short the represen- 
tation of the speaker, or the conception of the 
hearers, may have been of that richness, and that 
greatness, and that loftiness, which belong to it; 
possesses in itself a charm to fix the attention, and 
to regale the imagination, and to subdue the whole 
man into a delighted reverence ; and, in a word, to 
beget such a solemnity of thought and of emotion, 
as may occupy and enlarge the soul for hours 
together, as may w aft it away from the grossness of 
ordinary life, and raise it to a kind of elevated 
calm above a'd its vulgarities and all its vexations. 
Now, tell us whether the whole of this effect 
rpou the feelings may not be formed without the 
presence of religion. Tell us whether there might 
not be such a constitution of mind, that it may both 
want altogether that principle, in virtue of which 
the doctrines of Christianity are admitted into the 
belief, and the duties of Christianity are admitted 
into a government over the practice — and yet at 
the very same time, it may have the faculty of 
looking abroad over some scene of magnificence, 
and of being wrought up to ecstasy with the sense 
of all those glories among which it is expatiating. 
We want you to see clearly the distinction between 
these tw o attributes of the human character. They 
are, in truth, as different the one from the other, 
as a taste for the grand and the graceful cf scenery 



IN MATTSaS OF RELIGION. 161 

differs from the appetite of hunger ; and the one 
may both exist and have a most intense operation 
•wiihin the bosom of that very individual, who entirely 
disowns, and is entirely disgusted with the other. 
What ! must a man be converted, ere from the 
most elevated peak of some Alpine wilderness, he 
become capable of feeling the force and the majesty 
of those great lineaments which the hand of nature 
has thrown around him, in the varied forms of 
precipice, and mountain, and the wave of mighty 
forests, and the rush of sounding waterfalls, and 
distant glimpses of human territory, and pinnacles 
of everlasting snow, and the sweep of that circling 
horizon, which folds in its ample embrace the whole 
of this noble amphitheatre ? Tell us whether, 
without the aid of Christianity, or without a par- 
ticle of reverence for the only Name given under 
heaven whereby men can be saved, a man may not 
kindle at such a perspective as this, into all the 
raptures, and into all the movements of a poetic 
elevation ; and be able to render into the language 
of poetry, the whole of that sublime and beauteous 
imagery which adorns it ? and, as if he were tread- 
ing on the confines of a sanctuary which he has not 
entered, may he not mix up with the power and 
the enchantment of his description, such allusions 
to the presiding genius of the scene ; or to the still 
but animating spirit of the solitude; or to the speak- 
ing silence of some mysterious character which 
reigns throughout the landscape ; or, in fine, to that 
Eternal Spirit, who sits behind the elements He has 
formed, and combines them into ail the varieties oi 
a wide and a wonarous creation j — mignt not aii 



162 SLENDER INFLUENCE OF TAST8 

this be said and sung with an emphasis so moving; 
as to spread the colouring of piety over the page* 
of him who performs thus well upon his instrument; 
and yet, the performer himself have a conscience 
unmoved by a single warning of God's actual cora- 
munication, and the judgment unconvinced, and 
the fears unawakened, and the life unreformed by 
it? 

Now, what is true of a scene on earth, is also 
true of tliat wider and more elevated scene which 
stretches over the immensity around it, into a dark 
and a distant unknown. Who does not feel an 
aggrandizement of thought and of faculty, when he 
looks abroad over the amplitudes of creation — when, 
plated on a telescopic eminence, his aided eye can 
iiiid a pathway to innumerable worlds — when that 
wondrous field, over which there had hung for many 
ages the mantle of so deep an obscurity, is laid 
open to him, and, instead of a dreary and unpeopled 
soUtude, he can see over the whole face of it such 
an extended garniture of rich and goodly habita- 
tions? Even the Atheist, who tells us that the 
universe is self-existent and indestructible — even 
he, who instead of seeing the traces of a manifold 
vvisdom in its manifold varieties, sees nothing ic 
them all but the exquisite structures and the lofty 
dimensions of materialism — even he, who would 
despoil creation of its God, cannot look upon its 
golden suns, and theii accompanying systems, with- 
out the solemn impression of a magnificence tliai 
fixes and overpowers him. Now, conceive such a 
belief of God as you all profess, to dawn upon hia 
undt^rstanding. Let him become as one of your* 



i 



IN MATTERS OF RELIGION. 16 

selves — and so be put into the condition of rising 
from the avibUrxe of matter to the subhme of mind. 
Let him ntw I^arn to subordinate the whole of this 
mechanism to the design and authority of a great 
presiding Intelligence : and re-assembling all the 
members of the universe, however distant, into one 
family, let him mingle with his former conceptions 
of the grandeur which belong to it, the conception 
of that Eternal Spirit who sits enthroned on the 
immensity of His own wonders, and embraces ail 
that He has made, within the ample scope of one 
great administration. Then will the images and 
the impi-essions of sublimity come in upon him from 
a new quarter. Then will anotlier avenue be 
opened, through which a sense of grandeur may 
iind its way into his soul, and have a mightier 
influence than ever to fill, and to elevate, and to 
expand it. Then will be established a new and a 
noble association, by the aid of which all that he 
lormerly looked upon as fair, becomes more lovely ; 
and ail that he formerly looked upon as great, be- 
comes more magnificent. But will you believe us, 
that even with this accession to his mind of ideas 
gathered from the contemplation of the Divinity ; 
even with that pleasurable glow which steals over 
fiis imagination, when he now thinks of the majesty 
oi God ; even with as much of what you would call 
piety, as we fear is enough to sooth and to satisfy 
many of yourselves, and which stirs and kindles 
within you when you hear the goings forth of the 
oupreme set before you in the terms of a lofty 
representation; even with all this, we say, there 
may bo as wide a distance fiom the habit and tfao 



164 SLENDER INFLUENCE OF TASTE 

pharacter of godliness, as if God was still atheistU 
cally disowned by him. Take the conduct of his 
life and the currency of his affec'ions; and yo;i 
may see as little upon them of the stamp of loyaltv 
to God, or of reverence for any one of his authen- 
ticated proclamations, as you may see in him who 
offers his poetic incense to the genii, or weeps 
enraptured over the visions of a beauteous mytho- 
logy. The sublime of Deity has wrought up hia 
soul to a pitch of conscious and pleasing elevation 
— and yet this no more argues the will of Deity to 
have a practical authority over him, than does that 
tone of elevation which is caught by looking at the 
sublime of a naked materialism. The one and the 
other have their little hour of ascendancy over hire ; 
and when he turns him to the rude and ordinary 
world, both vanish alike from his sensibilities, as 
does the loveliness of a song. 

To kindle and be elevated by a sense of the 
majesty of God, is one thing. It is totally another 
thing, to feel a movement of obedience to the will 
of God, under the impression of His rightful au- 
thority over all the creatures whom He has formed. 
A man may have an imagination all alive to tne 
former ; while the latter never prompts him to one 
act of obedience ; never leads him to compare his 
life with the requirements of the Lawgiver ; never 
carries him from such a scrutiny as this, to the 
conviction of sin; never whispers such an accusation 
to ths ear of his conscience, as causes him to mou"n, 
and to be in heaviness for the guilt of his hourly 
and habitual rebellion ; never shuts him up to t\u 
conclusion of the need of a Saviour : never humbles 



IN MATTERS OF RELIGION. 165 

him to acquiescence in the doctrine of that revel- 
ation, which comes to his door with such a host of 
evidence, as even his own philosophy cannot bid 
away ; never extorts a single believing' prayer in 
the name of Christ, or points a single look, either 
of trust or of reverence, to His atonement ; never 
stirs any effective movement of conversion; never 
sends an aspiring energy into his bosom after the 
aids of that Spirit, who alone can waken him out 
of his lethargies, and by the anointing which 
reraaineth, can rivet and substantiate in his practice, 
fhose goodly emotions which have hitherto plied 
him with the deceitfulness of their momentary visits, 
and then capriciously abandoned him. 

The mere majesty of God's power and greatness, 
when offered to your notice, lays hold of one of 
the faculties within you. The holiness of God, 
with His righteous claim of legislation, lays hold 
of another of these faculties. The difference between 
them is so great, that the one may be engrossed 
and interested to the full, while the other remains 
untouched, and in a state of entire dormancy. Now, 
it is no matter what it be that ministers delight to 
the former of these two faculties : If the latter be 
not arrested and put on its proper exercise, you 
are making no approximation whatever to the right 
habit and character of religion. There are a 
thousand ways in which we may contrive to regale 
your taste for that which is beauteous and majestic. 
It may find its gratification in the loveliness of a 
vale, or in the freer and bolder outlines of an upland 
fcituation, or in the terrors of a storm, or in the 
Kubllme contemplations of astro lomy, or in the 



16'6 SLENDER INFLUEKCK OF TASTX 

magnificent idea of a God who sends forth the 
wakefiihiess of His omniscient-, eye, and the vigour 
of His upholding hand, throughout all the realms 
of nature and of providence. The mere taste of 
the human mind may get its ample enjoyment in 
each and in all of these objects, or in a vivid repre- 
sentation of them ; nor does it make any material 
difference, whether this representation be addressed 
to you from the stanzas of a poem, or from the 
recitations of a theatre, or finally from the discourses 
and the demonstrations of a pulpit. And thus it 
is, that still on the impulse of the one principle only, 
people may come in gathering multitudes to the 
house of God; and share with eagerness in all the 
glow and bustle of a crowded attendance ; and have 
their every eye directed to the speaker ; and feel a 
responding movement in their bosom to his many 
appeals and his many arguments ; and carry a 
solemn and overpowering impression of all the 
services away with them ; and yet, throughout the 
whole of this seemly exhibition, not one effectual 
knock may have been given at the door of conscience. 
The otber principle may be as profoundly asleep, 
as if hushed into the insensibility of death. There 
is a spirit of deep slumber, it would appear, which 
the music of no description, even though attuned 
to a theme so lofty as the greatness and majesty of 
the Godhead, can ever charm away. Oh ! it may 
have been a piece of parading insignificance al- 
together — the minister playing on his favourite 
instrument, and the people dissipating away their 
time on the charm and idle luxury of a theatrical 
emotion. 



IN MATTERS OI RELIGION. 167 

The religion of taste, is one thing. The rehgion 
of conscience, is another. We recur to the tesr. 
What is the plain and practical doing which ought 
to issue from the whole of our argument ? If one 
lesson come more clearly or more authoritatively 
out of it than another, it is the supremacy of the 
Bible. If fitted to impress one movement rather 
than another ; it is that movement of docility, iu 
virtue of which, man, with the feeling that he has 
all to learn, places himself in the attitude of a little 
child, before the book of the unsearchable God, who 
has deigned to break His silence, and to transmit 
even to our age of the world, a faithful record of his 
own communication. What progress then are you 
making in this movement ? Are you, or are you 
not, like new-born babes, desiring the sincere milk 
of the word, that you may grow thereby? How are 
you coming on in the w^ork of casting down your 
lofty imaginations ? With the modesty of true 
science, which is here at one with the humblest 
and most penitentiary feeling which Christianity 
can awaken, are you bending an eye of earnestness 
on the Bible, and appropriating its informations, 
and moulding your every conviction to its doctrines 
and its testimonies ? How long, we beseech you, 
has this been your habitual exercise ? By this 
time do you feel the darkness and the insufficiency 
of nature ? Have you found your w ay to the need 
of an atonement ? Have you learned the might 
and efficacy which are given to the principle of 
laith ? Have you longed with all your energies 
to realize it ? Have you broken loose from the 
obvious misdoings of your former history ? Are 



168 SLENDER INFLUENCE OF TASTE 

you convinced of your total deficiency from the 
spiritual obedience of the affections ? Have you 
read of the Holy Ghost, by whom renewed in the 
whole desire and character of your mind, you are 
led to run with alacrity in the way of the command- 
ments ? Have you turned to its practical use, the 
important truth, that He is given to the believing 
prayers of all, who really want to be relieved from 
the power both of secret and of visible iniquity ? 
We demand something more than the homage you 
have rendered to the pleasantness of the voice that 
has been sounded in your hearing. What we have 
now to urge upon you, is the bidding of the voice, 
to read, and to reform, and to pray, and, in a word, 
to make your consistent step from the elevations 
of philosophy, to all those exercises, whether of 
doing or of believing, which mark the conduct of 
the earnest, and the devoted, and the subdued, 
and the aspiring Christian. 

This brings under our view, a most deeply in- 
teresting exhibition of human nature, which may 
often be witnessed among the cultivated orders of 
society. When a teacher of Christianity addresses 
himself to that principle of justice within us, by 
which we feel the authority of God to be a preroga- 
tive which righteously belongs to Him, he is then 
speaking the appropriate language of religion, and 
is advancing its naked and appropriate claim over 
the obedience of mankind. He is then urging that 
pertinent and powerful consideration, upon which 
alone he can ever hope to obtain the ascendancy 
of a practical influence over the purposes and the 
conduct of human beings. It is only by insisting 



IN MATTERS OF RELIGION. 169 

on the moral claim of God to a right of government 
over his creatures, that he can carry their loyal 
subordination to the will of God. Let him keep 
by this single argument, and urge it upon the 
conscience, and then, without any of the other ac- 
companiments of wbat is called Christian oratory, 
he may bring convincingly home upon his hearers all 
the varieties of Christian doctrine. He may estab- 
lish within their minds the dominion of all that is 
essential in the faith of the New Testament. He 
may, by carrying out this principle of God's autho- 
rity into all its applications, convince them of sin. 
He may lead them to compare the loftiness and 
spirituality of His law, with the habitual obstinacy 
of their own worldly affections. He may awaken 
them to the need of a Saviour. He may urge them 
to a faithful and submissive perusal of God's own 
communication. He may thence press upon them 
the truth and the immutability of their Sovereign. 
-He may work in their hearts an impression of this 
emphatic saying, that God is not to be mocked-^ 
that His law must be upheld in all the significancy 
of its proclamations — and that either its severities 
must be discharged upon the guilty, or in some 
other way an adequate provision be found for its 
outraged dignity, and its violated sanctions. Thus 
may he lead them to flee for refuge to the blood of 
the atonement. And he may further urge upon 
tiis hearers, that such is the enormity of sin, that 
it is not enough to have found an expiation for it ; 
that its power and its existence must be eradicated 
from the hearts of all who are to spend their eternity 
in the mansions of the celestial ; that lor this jmr- 

VOL. Vll. H 



170 SLENDER IKFLUEN<;K OF TASTE 

pose, an exjiedienr is made Iwown to us in the New 
Testament ; that a process must be described upon 
earth, to which there is given the appropriate name 
of sanctilication ; that, at the very commencement 
of every true course of discipleship, this process is 
entered upon with a purpose in the mind of forsaking 
all ; that nothing short of a single devotedness to 
the will of God, will ever carry us forward through 
the successive stages of this holy and elevated 
career ; that to help the infirmities of our nature, 
the Spirit is ever in readiness to be given to those 
who ask it : and that thus the life of every Christian 
becomes a life of entire dedication to Him who 
died for us — a -life of prayer and vigilance, and 
close dependence on the grace of God — and, as 
the infallible result of the plain but powerful and 
neculiar teaching of the Bible, a life of vigorous 
unwearied activity in the doing of all the command- 
ments. 

Now, this we should call the essential business 
of Christianity. This is the truth as it is in Jesus^ 
in its naked and unassociated simplicity. In the 
work of urging it, nothing more might have been 
done, than to present certain views, which may 
come with as great clearness and freshness, and 
take as fiv.1 possession of the mind of a peasant, as 
of the mind of a pVilosopher. There is a sense 
of God, and of the rightful aHeg ance that is due 
to Him. There arc plain and practical appeals to 
th(? consdionce. Inhere is a comparison cf the state 
of the heart, vvi;i5 the requirenients of a law which 
proposes to take the heart under its obedience. 
There is the inward dis(jernment of its coldnew 



IN MATTERS OF RELIGIOJf. 171 

about God ; of its unconcern about the matters of 
duty and of eternity ; of its devotion to the forbidden 
objects of sense ; of its constant tendency to nourish 
within its own receptacles, the very element and 
principle of rebellion, and in virtue of this, to 
send forth the stream of an hourly and accumula- 
ting disobedience over those doings of the outer man, 
which make up his visible history in the world. 
There is such an earnest and overpowering im- 
pression of all this, as will fix a man down to the 
single object of deliverance; as will make him awake 
only to those realities which have a significant and 
substantial bearing on the case that engrosses him ; 
a« will teach him to nauseate all the impertinences 
of tasteful and ambitious description ; as will attach 
him to the truth in its simplicity ; as will fasten his 
every regard upon the Bible, where, if he persevere 
in the work of honest inquiry, he will soon be made 
to perceive the accordancy between its statements, 
and all those movements of fear, or guilt, or deeply 
felt necessity, or conscious darkness, stupidity, and 
unconcern about the matters of salvation, which 
pass within his own bosom ; in a word, as will en- 
dear to him that plainness of speech, by which his 
own experience is set evidently before him, and 
that plain phraseology of Scripture, which is best 
fitted to bring home to him the doctrine of redemp- 
tion, in all the truth and in all the preciousness of 
its applications. 

Now, the whole of this work may be going on, 
and that too in the wisest and most effectual man- 
ner, without so much as one particle of incense 
being offered to any of the Bubr>rdinate principles of 



172 SLENDER INFLUENCE OF TASTE 

the human ccnstitution. There may be no fa»- 
cinations of style. There may be no magnificenoe 
of description. There may be no poignancy 
of acute and irresistible argument. There may 
be a riveted attention on the part of those whom 
the Spirit of God hath awakened to seriousness 
about the plain and affecting realities of conver- 
sion. Their conscience may be stricken, and their 
appetite be excited for an actual settlement of 
mind on those points about which they feel restless 
and unconfirmed. Such as these are vastly too 
much engrossed with the exigencies of their condi- 
tion, to be repelled by the homeliness of unadorned 
truth. And thus it is, that while the loveliness of 
the song has done so little in helping on the 
influences of the gospel, our men of simplicity and 
prayer have done so much for it. With a deep 
and earnest impression of the truth themselves, they 
have made manifest that truth to the consciences 
of others. Missionaries have gone forth with no 
other preparation than the simple Word of the 
Testimony, — and thousands have owned its power, 
by being both the liearers of the word and the doers 
of it also. They have given us the experiment in 
a state of immingled simplicity ; and we learn, from 
the success of their noble example, that without 
any one human expedient to charm the ear, the 
heart may, by the naked instrumentality of the 
Word of God, urged with plainness on those who 
feel its deceit and its worthlessness, be charmed 
to an entire acquiescence in the revealed way of 
God, and have impressed upon it the genuine stamp 
tnd character of godliness. 



IN MATTERS OF RELIGION. 173 

Could the sense of what is due to God be effec- 
tually stirred up within the human bosom, it would 
lead to a practical carrying of all the lessons of 
Christianity. Now, to awaiien this moral sense, 
there are certain simple relations between the 
creature and the Creator, which must be clearly 
apprehended, and manifested with power unto the 
conscience. We believe, that however much phil- 
osophers may talk about that comparative ease of 
forming those conceptions which are simple, they 
will, if in good earnest after a right footing with 
God, soon discover in their own minds, all that 
darkness and incapacity about spiritual things, which 
are so broadly announced to us in the New Testa- 
ment. And oh ! it is a deeply interesting spectacle, 
to behold a man, who can take a masterly and 
commanding survey over the field of some huhian 
speculation, who can clear his discriminated way 
through all the turns and ingenuities of some human 
argument, who, by the march of a mighty and 
resistless demonstration, can scale with assured 
footstep the sublimities of science, and, from his 
firm stand on the eminence he has won, can descry 
some wondrous range of natural or intellectual truth 
spread out in subordination before him : — and yet 
this very man, may, in reference to the moral and 
authoritative claims of the Godhead, be in a state 
of utter apathy and bliadness ! All his attempts, 
either at the spiritual discernment, or the practical 
impression of this doctrine, may be arrested and 
baffled by the weight of some great inexplicable 
impotency. A man of homely talents, and still 
hcmelier education, may see what he cannot see, 



174 SLENDER INFLUENCE OF TASTE 

and feel what he cannot feel ; and wise and prudent 
as he is, there may lie the barrier of an obstinate 
and impenetrable concealment, between his accom- 
plished mind, and those things which are revealed 
unto babes. 

But wiiile his mind is thus utterly devoid of what 
may be called the main or elemental principle of 
theology, he may have a far quicker apprehension, 
and have his taste and his feelings much more 
powerfully interested, than the simple Christian 
who is beside him, by what may be called the cir- 
cumstantials of theology. He can throw^ a wider 
and more rapid glance over the magnitudes of 
creation. He can be more delicately alive to the 
beauties and the sublimities which abound in it. 
He can, when the idea of a presiding God is sug- 
gested to him, have a more kindling sense of His 
natural majesty, and be able, both in imagination 
and in words, to surround the throne of the 
Divinity by the blazonry of more great, and splendid, 
and elevating images. And yet, with all those 
powers of conception which he does possess, he 
may not possess that on vi^hich practical Chris- 
tianity hinges. The moral relation between him 
and God, may neither be effectively perceived, nor 
faithfully proceeded on. Conscience may be in a 
Btate of the most entire dormancy, and the man be 
regaling himself with the magnificence of God, 
while he neither loves God, nor believes God, nor 
obeys God. 

And here I cannot but remark, how much effect 
and simplicity go together in the annalin of Mor. 
avianisra. The men of this truly interesting 



IN MAlTSaS Of BtLiaiON. 173 

denomination, address themselves exclusively to 
that principle of our nature, on which the proper 
influence of Christianity turns. Or, in other 
words, they take up the subject of the gospel 
message — that message devised by Him who knew 
what was in man, and who, therefore, knew hew 
to make the right and the suitable application to 
man. They urge the plain Word of the Testimony: 
and they pray for a blessing from on high ; and 
that thick impalpable veil, by which the god of this 
world blinds the hearts of them who believe not, 
lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ should 
enter into them — that veil, which no power of 
philosophy can draw aside, gives way to the de- 
monstration of the Spirit ; and thus it is, that a 
clear perception of scriptural truth, and all the 
freshness and permanency of its moral influences, 
are to be met with among men who have just emerged 
from the rudest and the grossest barbarity. When 
one looks at the number and the greatness of their 
achievements — when he thinks on the change they 
have made on materials so coarse and so unpro- 
mising — when he eyes the villages they have formed 
— and around the whole of that engaging perspec- 
tive by which they have chequered and relieved 
the grim solitude of the desert, he witnesses the 
love, and listens to the piety of reclaimed savages ; 
— who would not long to be in possession of the 
charm by which they have wrought this wondrous 
transformation— who would not willingly exchange 
tor it all the parade of human eloquence, and all 
the confidence of human argument — and for the 
H'isdom of winning souls, who is there that would 



176 8LKNDER INFLUENCE OF TASTE 

not rejoice to throw the loveliness of the song, and 
all the insignificancy of its passing fascinations away 
from him ? 

And yet it is right that every cavil against 
Christianity should be met, and every argument 
for it be exhibited, and all the graces and sublim- 
ities of its doctrine be held out to their merited 
admiration. And if it be true, as it certainly is, 
that throughout the whole of this process, a man 
may be carried rejoicingly along from the mere in- 
dulgence of his taste, and the mere play and exercise 
of his understanding; while conscience is untouched, 
and the supremacy of moral claims upon the heart 
and the conduct is practically disowned by him — 
it is further right that this should be adverted to ; 
and that such a melancholy unhingement in the 
constitution of man should be fully laid open ; and 
that he should be driven out of the seductive com- 
placency which he is so apt to cherish, merely be- 
cause he delights in the loveliness of the song ; and 
that he should be urged with the iinperiousness of a 
demand which still remains unsatisfied, to turn him 
from the corrupt indifference of nature, and to be- 
come personally a religious man ; and that he should 
be assured how all the gratification he felt in listen- 
ing to the word which respected the kingdom of 
God, will be of no avail, unless that kingdom come 
to himself in power — that it will only go to heighten 
the perversity of his character — that it will not 
extenuate his real and practical ungodliness, but 
will serve most fearfully to aggravate its condem- 
nation. 

With a religion so argumentable as ours, itrtay 



IN MATTERS OF RELIGION. 177 

be easy to gather out of it a feast for the human 
understanding. With a religion so magnificent aa 
ours, it may be easy to gather out of it a feast for 
the human imagination. But with a reUgion so 
humbling, and so strict, and so spiritual, it is not 
easy to mortify the pride, or to quell the strong 
enmity of nature ; or to arrest the currency of the 
affections ; or to turn the constitutional habits ; or 
to pour a new complexion over the moral history ; 
or to stem the domineering influence of things seen 
and things sensible ; or to invest faith with a prac- 
tical supremacy; or to give its objects such a 
vivacity of influence as shall overpower the near 
and the hourly impressions, that are ever emanating 
upon man from a seducing world. It is here that 
man feels himself treading upon the limit of his 
helplessness. It is here that he sees where the 
strength of nature ends ; and the power of grace 
must either be put forth, or leave him to grope his 
darkling way without one inch of progress towards 
the life and the substance of Christianity. It is 
here' that a barrier rises on the contemplation of 
the inquirer — the barrier of separation between the 
carnal and the spiritual, and on which he may idly 
waste the every energy which belongs to him in the 
enterprise of surmounting it. It is here, that after 
having walked the round of nature's acquisitions, 
and lavished upon the truth all his ingenuities, and 
surveyed it in its every palpable character of grace 
and majesty, he will still feel himself on a level with 
the simplest and most untutored of the species. 
He needs the power of a living manifestation. He 
needs the anointing which remaineth. He needs 
h2 



178 SLENDER INrLUENCE OF TASTE 

that which fixes and perpetuates a stable revolution 
upon the character, and in virtue of which he may 
be advanced from the state of one who hears and is 
dehghted, to the state of one who hears and is a doer. 
How strikingly is the experience even of vigorous 
and accomplished nature at one on this point with 
the announcements of revelation, that to work this 
change, there must be the putting forth of a pe- 
culiar agency; and thatitis an agency, which, with- 
held from the exercise of loftiest talent, is often 
brought down on an impressed audience, through 
the humblest of all instrumentality, with the de- 
monstration of the Spirit and with power. 

Think it not enough, that you carry in your 
bosom an expanding sense of the magnificence of 
creation. But pray for a subduing sense of the 
authority of the Creator. Think it not enough, 
that with the justness of a philosophical discernment, 
you have traced that boundary which hems in all 
the possibilities of human attainment, and have 
found that all beyond it is a dark and fathomless 
unknown. But let this modesty of science be 
carried, as in consistency it ought, to the question 
of revelation, and let all the antipathies of nature 
be schooled to acquiescence in the authentic tes- 
timonies of the Bible. Think it not enough, that 
you have looked with sensibility and wonder at the 
representation of God throned in immensity, yet 
combining, with the vastness of his entire super- 
intendance, a most thorough inspection into all the 
minute and countless diversities of existence. Think 
of your own heart as one of these diversities ; and 
that he ponders all its tendencies j and has an eye 



IN MATTERS OF KBLIGION. 179 

upon all its movements; and marks all its way w ard- 
aes-i ; and, God of judgment as he is, records its 
every secret, and its every sin, n the book of his 
ren.embrance. Think it not enough, that yon 
have been led to associate a grandeur with the 
garvation of the New 'I'estament, wiien made to 
understand that it draws upon it the regards of an 
arrested universe. How is it arresting your own 
mii^.d ? What has been the earnestness of your 
peisonal regards towards it ? And tell us, if all ita 
faith, and all its repentance, and all its holiness, 
are not disowned by you ? 'Jhink it not enough, 
tnatyou have felt a sentimental charm wlum angels 
were pictured to your fancy as beckoning you to 
meir mansions, and anxiously looking to the every 
symptom of your grace and reformation. Be con- 
sti. lined by the power of all this tenderness, and 
yield yourselves up in a practical obedience to the 
call of the Lord God, merciful and gracious. Think 
it not enough, that you have shared for a moment 
in the deep and busy interest of that arduous con- 
flict which is now going on for a moral ascendancy 
over the species. Remember that the conflict is 
for each of you individually ; and let this alarm 
you into a watchfulness against the power of every 
temptation, and a cleaving dependence upon Him 
through whom alone you will be more than con- 
querors. Above all, forget not, that while you 
only hear and are delighted, you are still under 
nature's powerlessness and nature's condemnation 
— und that the foundation is not laid, the mighty 
and essential change is not accomplished, the 
traiisition from death unto life is not undergone, 



180 SLENDER INFLUBMCB Of TASTE, &C, 

the saving faith is not formed^ nor the passage taken 
from darkness to the marvellous light of the gospel, 
till you are both hearers of the word and doers 
«]so. " For if any be a hearer of the word, and 
not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his 
natural face in a glass : for be beholdeth himsell, 
and goeth his way, and straightway idrgetteth what 
auuDcr of man he was." 



APPENDIX. 



Thb writer of these Discourses has drawn up the 
foLowing compilation of passages from Scripture, 
as serving to illustrate or to confirm the leading 
arguments which have been employed in each se- 
parate division of his subject. 



I 



DISCOURSE I. 

In the beginning God created the heaven and 
the earth. — Gen. i. 1» 

Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, 
and all the host of them. — Gen. ii. 1. 

Behold, the heaven, and the heaven of heavens, 
is the Lord's thy God, the earth also, with all that 
therein is. — Deut. x. 14. 

'I'here is none like unto the God of Jeshurun, 
.who rideth upon the heaven in thy help, and in 
his excellency on the sky — Deut. xxxiii, 26. 

And Hezekiah prayed before the Lord, and said, 
O Lord God of Israel, which dwellest between the 
cherubims, thou art the God, even thou alone, of 
all the kingdoms of the earth ; thou hast made 
heaven and earth 2 Kings xix. 15. 

For all the gods of the people are idols : but the 
Lord made the heavens. — 1 Chron. xvi. 26. 

Tliou, even thou, art Lord alone: thou hastf 



182 APPENDIX. 

made heaven, the heaven of heavens, with all their 
host, the earth, and all things that are therein, the 
seas, and all that is therein ; and thou preservest 
them all ; and the host of heaven worshippeth 
tiiee Nehemiah ix. 6. 

Which alone spreadeth out the heavens, and 
treadeth upon the waves of the sea ; which maketh 
Arcturus, Orion, and Pleiades, and the chambers 
of the south Job ix. 8, 9. 

He stretcbeth out the north over the empty 
place, and hangeth the earth upon nothing. — Job 
XX vi. 7. 

By his Spirit he hath garnished the heavens.— 
Job xxvi. 13. 

The heavens declare the glory of God ; and the 
firmament showeth his handy-work. — Psalm xix. 1. 

By the word of the Lord were the heavens made; 
and all the host of them bj the breath of bis mouth. 
— Psalm xxxiii. 6. 

Of old hast thou laid the foundation of the earth; 

and the heavens are the work of thy hands Psalm 

cii, 25. 

Who CGverest thyself with light as with a gar 
ment; who stretchest out the heavens like a curtain. 
— Psalm civ. 2. 

He appointed the moon for seasons ; the sun 
knoweth his going down Psalm civ. 19. 

Ye are blessed of the Lord, which made heaven 
and earth. The heaven, even the heavens, are 
the Lord's : but the earth hath be given to the child- 
ren of men — Psalm cxv. 15, 16. 

My help cometh from the Lord, which made 
heaven and earth. — Psalm cxxi. 2. 



APPENDIX. 183 

Our help is in the name of the Lord, who made 
heaven and earth Psalm cxxiv. 8. 

The Lord, that made heaven and earth, blesa 
thee out of Zion. — Psalm cxxxiv. 3. 

Wiiich made heaven, and earth, the sea, and all 
that therein is. — Psalm cxlvi. 6. 

The Lord by wisdom hath founded the earth ; 
by understanding hath he established the heavens. 
— Prov. iii. 19. 

Who iiath measured the waters in the hollow of 
his hand, and meted out heaven with the span, and 
comprehended the dust of the earth in a measure, 
and weighed the mountains in scales, and the hills 
in a balance? — Isa. xl. 12. 

It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, 
and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers; 
that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and 
spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in. — Isa. 
xl. 22. 

Thus saith God the Lord, he that created the 
heavens, and stretched them out ; he that spread 
forth the earth, and that which cometh out of it ; 
he that giveth breath unto the people upon it, and 
spirit to them that walk therein Isa. xlii. 5. 

Thus saith the Lord, thy Redeemer, and he 
that formed thee from the womb, I am the Lord 
that maketh all things; that stretcheth forth the 
heavens alone ; that spreadeth abroad the earth 
by himself. — Isa. xliv. 24. 

I have made the earth, and created man upon 
it : I, even my hands, have stretched out the hea- 
vens, and all their host have I commanded — Isa. 
xlv. 12. 



*84 APPENDIX. 

For thus saith the Lord that created the heavens, 
God himself that formed the earth, and made it; 
he hath established it, he created it not in vain, he 
formed it to be inhabited. — Isa. xlv. 18. 

Mine hand also hath laid the foundation of the 
earth, and my right hand hath spanned the heavens: 
when I call unto them, they stand up together — 
Isa. xlviii. 13. 

He hath made the earth by his power, he hath 
established the world by his wisdom, and hath 
stretched out the heavens by his discretion. — Jer 
X. 12. 

Ah Lord God I behold, thou hast made tha 
heaven and the earth by thy great power and 
stretched-out arm, and there is nothing too hard for 
thee — Jer. xxxii. 17. 

He hath made the earth by his power, he hath 
established the world by his wisdom, and hath 
stretched out the heaven by his understanding. — . 
Jer. li. 15. 

It is he that buildeth his stories in the heaven, 
and hath founded his troop in the earth ; he that 
calleth for the waters of the sea, and poureth them 
out upon the face of the earth : The Lord is his 
name Amos ix. 6. 

We also are men of like passions with you, and 
preach unto you, that ye should turn from these 
vanities unto the living God, which made heaven, 
and earth, and the sea, and all things that are 
therein. — Acts xiv. 15. 

Hath in these last days spoken unto us by his 
Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, 
Dy whom also he made the worlds. — Heb. i. 2, 



APPENDIX. 185 

Thou, Lord, in the bes;inning hast laid the 
foundation of the earth ; and the heavens are the 
works of thine hands Heb. i. 10. 

Through faith we understand that the worlds 
were framed by the word of God Heb. xi, 3. 



DISCOURSE II. 

The secret things belong unto the Lord our God; 
but those things which are revealed belong unto us 
and to our children for ever, that we may do all 
the words of this law — Deut. xxix. 29. 

I would seek unto God, and unto God would I 
commit my cause; which doeth great things and 
unsearchable ; marvellous things without number. — 
Job V. 8, 9. 

Which doeth great things past finding out ; yea, 
and wonders without number Job ix. 10. 

Canst thou by searching find out God ? canst 
thou find out the Almighty unto perfection ? — Job 
xi. 7. 

Hast thou heard the secret of God ? and dost 
thou restrain wisdom to thyself? — Job xv. 8. 

Lo, these are parts of his ways ; but how little 
a portion is heard of him ? but the thunder of his 
power who can understand? — Job xxvi. 14. 

Behold, God is great, and we know him not, 
neither can the number of his years be searched 
out Job xxxvi. 26. 

God thundereth marvellously with his voice; 



18G APP£NDIX. 

great things doeth he, which we cannot comprehend. 
—Job xxxvii. 5. 

Touching the Almighty, we cannot find him out : 
he is excellent in power, and in judgment, and in 
plenty, of justice Job xxxvii. 23. 

Thy way is in the sea, and thy path in the great 
waters, and thy footsteps are not known. — Psalm 
Ixxvii. 19. 

Great is the Lord, and greatly tP be praised, 
and his greatness is unsearchable. — Psalm cxlv. 3. 

For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither 
are your ways my ways, saitli the Lord. For as 
the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my 
ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts 
than your thoughts Isa. Iv. 8, 9. 

Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, 
and become as little children, ye shall not enter 
into the kingdom of heaven. — Matt, xviii. 3. 

Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall not 
receive the kingdom of God as a little child shak 
in nowise enter therein Luke xviii. 17. 

O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom 
and knowledge of God ! how unsearchable are his 
judgments, and his ways past finding out ! For who 
hath known the mind of the Lord ? or who hath 
been his counsellor ? — Rom. xi. 33, 34. 

Let no man deceive himself. If any man among 
you seemeth to be wise in this world, let him be- 
come a fool, that he may be wise. — 1 Cor. iii. 18. 

For if a man thinketh himself to be somethingj 
when he is nothing, he deceiveth himself. — Gal 
vi. 3. 

Beware lest any man spoil you through philoBO- 



APPENDIX. 187 

phy raid vain deceit, after the tradition of men, aftei 
the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ.—. 
Col. ii. 8. 

O Timothy, keep that which is committed to thy 
trust, avoiding profane and vain babblings, and 
oppositions of science falsely so called. — 1 Tira.vi. 20 



DISCOURSE III. 

But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Be- 
hold, the heaven, and heaven of heavens, cannot 
contain thee ; how much less this house that I have 
builded ! Yet have thou respect unto the prayer 
of thy servant, and to his supplication, O Lord my 
God, to hearken unto the cry and to the prayer 
Avhich thy servant prayeth before thee to-day : that 
thine eyes may be open toward this house night 
and day, even toward the place of which thou hast 
said. My name shall be there ; that thou mayest 
hearken unto the prayer which thy servant shall 
make toward this place. — 1 Kings viii. 27, 28, 29. 

For he looketh to the ends of the earth, and 
seeth under the whole heaven Job xxviii. 24. 

For his eyes are upon the ways of man, and he 
seeth all his goings — Job xxxiv. 21. 

Though the Lord be high, yet hath he respect 
unto the lowly. — Psalm cxxxviii. 6. 

O Lord, thou hast searched me, and known me. 
Thou knowest my down-sitting and mine up-rising 
thou understandest my thought afar off. Thou 
compassest my path, and my lying "down, and art 



188 APPENDIX. 

acquuuited with ail my ways. For there is not a 
word in my tongue, but, lo, O Lord, thou knowest 
it altogether. Tliou hast beset me behind and 
before, and laid thine hand upon me. Such know- 
ledge is too wonderful for me ; it is high, I cannot 
attain unto it. Whither shall I go from thy Spirit ? 
or whither shall I flee from thy presence? — Psalm 
cxxxix. 1 — 7. 

How precious also are thy thoughts unto me, O 
God ! how great is the sum of them ! If I should 
count them, they are more in number than the 

sand : when I awake, I am still with thee Psalm 

cxxxix. 17, 18. 

The eyes of the Lord are in every place, behold- 
ing the evil and the good — Prov. xv. 3. 

Can any hide himself in secret places that I 
shall not see liim ? saith the Lord : do not I fill 
heaven and earth ? saith the Lord Jer. xxiii, 24. 

Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, 
neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your 
heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much 
better than they ? And why take ye thought for 
raiment ? Consider the lilies of the field, how they 
grow ; they toil not, neither do they spin : and yet 
I say unto you, That even Solomon, in all his glor)'', 
was not arrayed like one of these. Wherefore, if 
God so clothe the grass of the field, which to-day 
is, and to-morrow is cast into the oven, shall he 
not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith ? — 
Matt. vi. 26, 28, 29, 30. 

But the very hairs of your head are all numbered, 
i— Matt. X. 30. 

Neither is there any creature that is not manifest 



APPENDIX. 189 

b his sight : but all things are naked and opened 
unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do.--, 
Heb. iv. 13. 



DISCOURSE IV. 

A.nd he dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on 
the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven ; and 
behold the angels of God ascending and descending 
on it Gen. xxviii. 12. 

For a thousand years in thy sight are but as 
yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the 
night. — Psalm xc. 4. 

Lift up your eyes to the heavens, and look upon 
the earth beneath; for the heavens shall vanish away 
like smoke, and the earth shall wax old like a gar- 
ment, and they that dwell therein shall die in like 
manner : but my salvation shall be for ever, and my 
righteousness shall not be abohshed. — Isa. li. 6. 

For the Son of man shall come in the glory of his 
Father, with his angels ; and then he shall reward 
every man according to his works. — Matt. xvi. 27. 

When the Son of man shall come in his glory, 
and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit 
upon the throne of his glory — Matt. xxv. 31. 

Also 1 say unto you, Whosoever shall confess 
me before men, him shall the Son of man also con- 
fess before the angels of God : but he that denieth 
me before men, shall be denied before the angels 
of God— Luke xii. 8, 9. 

And he saith unto him, Verily, verily, I saj 



190 APPENDIX. 

unto you, Hereafter ye shall see heaven open, and 
the angels of God ascending and descendmg upon 
the Son of man. — John i. 51. 

We are made a spectacle unto the world, and to 
angels, and to men — 1 Cor. iv. 9. 

Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, 
and given him a name which is above every name ; 
that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, 
of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things 
under the earth ; and that every tongue should 
confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of 
God the Father Phil. ii. 9, 10, 11. 

When the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from 
heaven with his mighty angels. — 2 Thess. i. 7. 

And, without controversy, great is the mystery 
of godliness : God was manifest in the flesh, justifi- 
ed in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the 
Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into 
glory — 1 Tim. iii. 16. 

I charge thee before God, and the Lord Jesus 
Christ, and the elect angels, that thou observe 
these things 1 Tim. v. 21. 

And again, when he bringeth in the first-begotten 
into the world, he saith. And let all the angels of 
God worship him Heb. i. 6. 

But ye are come unto Mount Zion, and unto 
the city of the living God, the heavenly Jeru- 
salem, and to an innumerable company of angels, 
to the general assembly and church of the first- 
born, which are written in heaven, and to God the 
Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made 
perfect, and to Jesus the mediator of the new cov« 
enant — Heb. xii. 22, 23, 24 



APPENDIX. ]9i 

But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, 
that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, 
and a thousand years as one day. The Lord ii 
not slack concerning his promise, as some men count 
slackness ; but is long suffering to us- ward, not 
willing that any should perish, but that ail should 
come to repentance. But the day of the Lord 
will come as a thief in the night ; in the which 
the heavens shall pass away with a great noise. 
and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the 
earth also, and the works that are therein, shall b« 
burnt up 2 Peter iii. 8, 9, 10. 

And the angel which I saw stand upon the sea 
and upon the earth lifted up his hand to heavec. 
and sware by him that liveth for ever and ever, who 
created heaven, and the things that therein are, and 
the earth, and the things that therein are, and the 
sea, and the things which are therein, that there 
should be time no longer — Rev. x. 5, 6. 

And the third angel followed them, saying with 
a loud voice, If any man worship the beast and his 
image, and receive his mark in his forehead, or in his 
hand, the same shall drink of the wine of the wrath 
of God, which is poured out without mixture into 
the cup of his indignation ; and he shall be tor- 
mented with fire and brimstone in the presence of 
the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb. 
—Rev. xiv. 9, 10. 

And I saw a great white throne, and him that 
sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven 
fled away ; and there was found no place for them. 
—Rev. XX. 11. 



192 APPENDIX. 



DISCOURSE V. 

And Nathan departed unto his house : and the 
Lord struck the child that Uriah's wife bare ante 
David, and it was very sick. David therefore be- 
Bought God for the child ; and David fasted, and 
went in, and lay all night upon the earth. And 
the elders of his house arose, and went to him, to 
raise him up from the earth : but he would not, 
neither did he eat bread with them. And it came 
to pass on the seventh day, that the child died. 
And the servants of David feared to tell him that 
the child was dead ; for they said, Behold, while 
the child was yet alive, we spake unto him, and he 
would not hearken unto our voice: how will he then 
vex himself, if we tell him that the child is dead ? 
But when David saw that his servants whispered, 
David perceived that the child was dead: there- 
fore David said unto his servants. Is the child dead? 
And they said. He is dead. Then David arose 
from the earth, and washed, and anointed himself, 
and changed his apparel, and came into the house 
of the Lord, and worshipped : then he came to 
his own house ; and when he required, they set 
broad before him, and he did eat. Then said his 
servants unto him. What thing is this that thou 
h.ast done ? Thou didst fast and weep for the 
child, while it was alive; but when the child was 
dead, thou didst rise and eat bread. And he 
said. While the child was yet alive, I fasted and 
wept: for I said. Who can tell whether God will 
be gracious to me, that the child may live ? But 



APPENDIX, 193 

now he is dead, wherefore should I fast ? can I 
bring him back again ? I shall go to him, but 
he shall not return to me. — 2 Sam. xii. 15 — i'6. 

The angel of the Lord encampeth round about 
them that fear him, and delivereth them. — Psalm 
xxxiv. 7. 

For he shall give his angels charge over thee, 
to keep thee in all thy ways Psalm xci. 11. 

And he shall send his angels with a great sound 
of a trumpet, and they shall gather together his 
elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven 
to the other Matt. xxiv. 31. 

Likewise, I say unto you. There is joy in the 
presence of the angels of God over one sinner that 
repenteth — Luke xv. 10. 

Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to 
minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation ? 
— Heb, i. 14, 



DISCOURSE VI. 

Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the 
wilderness, to be tempted of the devil — Matt. iv. 1, 

The enemy that sowed them is the devil ; the 
harvest is the end of the world ; and the reapers 
are the angels. The Son of man shall send forth 
his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom 
all things that offend, and them which do iniquity, 
—Matt, xiii, 39, 41. 

Then shall he say also unto them on the left 
hand. Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting 

VOL. viu 1 



194 APPENDIX. 

fire, prepared for the devil and his angels, — Matt 
XXV. 41. 

And in the sy nagogue there was a man which 
had a spirit of an unclean devil, and cried out. %vith 
a loud voice, saying, Let us alone ; what have we 
to do with thee, thou Jesus of Nazareth ? art thou 
come to destroy us ? I know thee who thou art : 
the Holy One of God Luke iv. 33, 34. 

Those by the way-side are they that hear ; then 
cometh the devil, and taketh away the word out of 
their hearts, lest they should believe and be saved. 
— Luke viii. 12. 

But he, knowing their thoughts, said unto them, 
Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to 
desolation ; and a house divided against a house 
f.iUeth. If Satan also be divided against himself, 
how shall his kingdom stand ? because ye say that I 
cast out devils through Beelzebub Luke xi.17,18. 

Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of 
your father ye will do : he was a murderer from 
the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because 
there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, 
he speaketh of his own : for he is a liar, and the 
father of it John viii. 44. 

And supper being ended, (the devil having now 
put into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon's son, 
to betray him.) — John xiii. 2. 

But Peter said, Ananias, why hath Satan filled 
thine heart to lie to the Holy Ghost, and to keep 
back part of the price of the land ? — Acts v. 3. 

To open their eyes, and to turn them from dark- 
ness to light, and from the power of Satan unto 
God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins, and 



APPCNniX. 1-95 

inheritance among them which are sanctified by 
faith that is in me — Acts xxvi. 18. 

And the God of peace shall bruise Satan under 
your feet shortly. The grace of our Lord Jesus 
Christ be with you. Amen Rom. xvi. 20. 

Lest Satan should get an advantage of as : for 
we are not ignorant of his devices. — 2 Cor. ii. 11. 

In whom the god of this world hath blinded the 
minds of them which believe not, lest the light of 
the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of 
God, should shine unto them. — 2 Cor. iv. 4. 

Wherein in time past ye walked according to 
the course of this world, according to the prince of 
the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh 
in the children of disobedience — Eph. ii. 2. 

Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may 
be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For 
we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against 
principalities, against powers, against the rulers ot 
the darkness of this world, against spiritual wicked- 
ness in high places — Eph. vi. 1 1, 12. 

For some are already turned aside after Satan. — 
iTim.v. 15. 

Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of 
flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took "part 
of the same ; that through death he might destroy 
him that had the power of death, that is, the devil. 
— Heb. ii. 14. 

Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist 
the devil, and he will flee from you. — James iv. 7. 

Be sober, be vigilant ; because your adversary 
the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking 
whom he may devour : whom resist steadfast in the 



196 APPENDIX. 

faith, knowing that the same afflictions are acceni« 
plished in your brethren that are in the world. — 1 
Pet. V. 8, 9. 

He that committeth sin is cf the devil ; for the 
devil sinneth from the beginning. For this purpose 
the Son of God was manifested, that he might de- 
fitroy the works of the devil.^In this the children 
of God are manifest, and the children of the devil : 
whosoever doeth not righteousness is not of God^- 
neither he that loveth not his brother — 1 John iii. 
8, 10. 

Ye are of God, little children, and have overcome 
them ; because greater is he that is in you, than he 
that is in the world 1 John iv. 4. 

And the angels which kept not their first estate, 
but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in 
everlasting chains, under darkness, unto the judg- 
ment of the great day Jude 6. 

He that overcometh, the same shall be clothed 
in white raiment ; and I will not blot out his name 
out of the book of life, but I will confess his name 
before my Father, and before his angels. — Rev. iii. 5. 

And there was war in heaven : Michael and his 
angels fought against the dragon ; and the dragon 
fought and his angels, and prevailed not ; neither 
was their place found any more in heaven. And 
the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, 
called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the 
whole world ; he was cast out into the earth, and 
his angels were cast out with him. Therefore re- 
joice, ye heavens, and ye that dv ell in them. Woe 
to the inhabiters of the earth and of the sea! for 
the devil is come down unto you, having great 



APPENDIX. 197 

wrath, because he knoweth that he hath but a ohort 
time.— Rev. xii. 7, 8, 9, 12. 

Aiid he laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent, 
which is the Devil, and Satan, and bound him a 
thousand years. And when the thousand years are 
expired, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison. 
And the devil that deceived them was cast into the 
lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the 
false prophet are, and shall be tormented day and 
night for ever and ever — Rev. xx. 2, 7, 10. 



DISCOURSE VII. 

Therefore, whosoever heareth these sayings of 
mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise 
man, which built his house upon a rock; and the 
rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds 
blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not: 
for it was founded upon a rock. And every one 
that heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them 
not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, which built 
his house upon the sand: and the rain descended, 
and the floods came, and the winds blew : and beat 
upon that house ; and it fell : and great was the fall 
of it Matt. vii. 24—27. 

At that time Jesus answered and said, I thank 
thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because 
thou hast hid these things from the wise and pru- 
dent, and hast revealed them unto babes. — Matt. 
XI. 25. 

Then shall ye begin to say, We have eaten ami 



198 APPENDIX. 

drunk in thy presence, and thou hast taught in out 
streets. But he sliall say, I tell you, I know you 
not whence ye are : depart from me, all ye workers 
of iniquity Luke xiii. 26, 27. 

For not the hearers of the law are just before 
God, but the doers of the law shall be justified.— 
Rom. ii. 13. 

And I, brethren, when I came to you, came not 
with excellency of speech, or of wisdom, declaring 
unto you the testimony of God: for I determined not; 
to know any thing among you, save Jesus Christ, and 
him crucified. And my speech and my preaching 
was not with enticing words of man's wisdom, but 
in demonstration of the Spirit and of power; that 
your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, 
but in the power of God. Now we have received, 
not tlie spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is 
of God ; that we might know the things that are 
freely given to us of God. Which things also we 
speak, not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth, 
but which the Holy Ghost teacheth ; comparing 
spiritual things with spiritual. But the natural 
man receiveth not the thmg^ ol Lie Spirit of God ; 
for they are foolishness unto him : neither can he 
know them, because they are spiritually discerned. 
— 1 Cor. ii. 1, 2, 4, 5, 12, 13, 14. 

For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with 
God 1 Cor. iii. 19. 

For the kingdom of God is not in word, but in 
power. — 1 Cor. iv. 20. 

Forasmuch as ye are manifestly declared to be 
the epistle of Christ, ministered by us, written not 
with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God ; not 



APPENDIX. 199 

m tables of stone, but in £eshly tables of the heart. 
Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think any 
thing as of ourselves ; but our sufficiency is of God; 
who also hath made us able ministers of the New 
Testament; not of the lett-sr, but of the spirit: for 
the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life. — 2 Cor. 
iii. 3, 5, 6. 

That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the 
Father of glory, may giv3 ui^to you the spirit of 
wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him : 
the eyes of your understandirg being enlightened ; 
that ye may know what is the hope of his calling, 
and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance 
ui the saints, and what is the exceeding greatness 
of his power to us-wartl who believe, accordmg to 

the working of his mighty power Eph. i. 17, 18, 

19. 

And you hath he quickened, who were dead in 
trespasses and sins. For we are his workmanship, 
created in Christ Jesus unto good works. — Eph. ii. 
1, 10. 

For our gospel came not unto you in word only, 
but also in power, and in the Holy Ghost, and in 
much assurance. — 1 Th^ss. i. 5. 

Of his own will begat he us with the word of 
truth, that we should be a kind of first-fruits of his 
creatures. But be ye doers of the word, and not 
hearers only, deceiving your ownselves. For if any 
be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like 
unto a man beholding his natural face in a glass : 
for he beholdcth himseJf, and goeth his way, and 
straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was. 
But vvhoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty, 



200 APPENDIX. 

and continueth therein, he being not a forgetful 
hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be 
blessed in his deed — James i. 18, 22, 25. 

But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priest- 
hood, an holy nation, a peculiar people ; that ye 
should show forth the praises of him who hath call- 
ed you out of darkness into his marvellous light.«~ 
1 Peter ii. 9. 

But ye have an unction from the Holy One, and 
ye know all things. But the anointing which ye 
have received of him abideth in you ; and ye need 
not that any man teach you : but as the same an- 
ointing teacheth you of all things, and is truth, 
and is no lie, and even as it hath taught you, f9 
shail abide in him. — 1 John iu Wp 27* 



DISCOURSEb 



THE CONSTANCY UP KATUIIE, &C. 203 



DISCOURSE I 

rilE CONSTANCY OF GOD IN HIS WORKS AN 
ARGUMENT FOR THE FAITHFULNESS OF 
GOD IN HIS WORD. 



For ever, O Lord, thy word is settled in heaven. Thy faithftj. 
ness is unto all generations : thou hast established the earth, 
and it abideth. They coutinue this day according to thina 
ordinances : for all are thy servants." — Psalm cxix. 89, 90, 91. 

Iw these verses there is affirmed to be an analogy 
oetween the word of God and the works of Go(L 
It is said of His word, that it is settled in heavenj 
and that it sustains its faithfulness from one genersfe- 
tion to another. It is said of His works, and mor# 
especially of those that are immediately around us», 
even of the earth which we inhabit, that as it was 
established at the first so it abideth afterwards. 
And then, as if to perfect the assimilation between 
them, it is said of both in the 91st verse, "They 
continue this day according to thine ordinances, for 
all are thy servants ;" thereby identifying the sure- 
ness of that word which proceeded from His lips, 
with the unfailing constancy of that Nature which 
was formed and is upholden by His hands. 

The constancy of Nature is taught by universal 
experience, and even strikes the popular eye as the 
most characteristic of those features which have 
been impressed upon her. It may need the aid of 
philosophy to learn how unvarying Nature is in all 
her processes — how even her seeming anomalie« 



204 THE CONSTANCY Of NATUHE 

can be traced to a law that i« inflexible — how what 
might appear al; first to be the caprices of her way- 
wardness, are, in fact, the evolutions of a mechanism 
that never changes — and that the more thoroughly 
she is sifted and put to the test by the interrogations 
3f the curious, the more certainly will they find 
that she walks by a rule which knows no abatement, 
and perseveres with obedient footstep in that even 
course, from which the eye of strictest scrutiny, 
has never yet detected one hair-breadth of deviation. 
It is no longer doubted by men of science, that 
every remaining semblance of irregularity in tho 
universe is due, not to the fickleness of Nature, but 
to the ignorance of man — that her most hidden 
movements are conducted with a uniformity as 
rigorous as Fate — that even the fitful agitations of 
the weather have their law and their principle—. 
that the intensity of every breeze, and the number 
of drops in every shower, and the formation of every 
cloud, and all the occurring alternations of storm 
and sunshine, and the endless shiftings of tempera^ 
ture, and those tremulous varieties of the air which 
our instruments have enabled us to discover but 
have not enabled us to explain — that still, they 
follow each other by a method of succession, which, 
though greatly more intricate, is yet as absolute iu 
itself as the order of the seasons, or the mathemati- 
cal courses of astronomy. This is the impression 
of every philosophical mind with regard to Nature, 
and it is strengthened by each new accession that 
is made to science. The more we are acquainted 
with her, the more are we led to recognise her 
constancy } and to view her as a mighty though 



AND FAITHFULNESS OF GOD 205 

(tbmplicated machine, aii whose results are sur^ 
and all whose workings are invariable. 

But there is enough of patent and palpable reg- 
ularity in Nature, to give also to the popular mind, 
the same impression of her constancy. There is 
a gross and general experience that teaches the 
isaine lesson, and that has lodged in every bosom a 
kind of secure and steadfast confidence in the imi- 
formity of her processes. The very child knows 
and proceeds upon it. He is aware of an abiding 
character and property in the elements around him 
— and has already learned as much of the fire, and 
the water, and the food that he eats, and the firm 
ground that he treads upon, and even of the gravita- 
tion by which he must regulate his postures and his 
movements, as to prove, that, infant though he be 
he is fully initiated in the doctrine, that Nature 
has her laws and her ordinances, and th^at she con- 
tinueth therein. • And the proofs of this are ever 
multiplying along the journey of human observation: 
insomuch, that when we come to manhood, we read 
of Nature's constancy throughout every department 
of the visible world. It meets us where'^e'' we 
turn our eyes. Both the day and the night bear 
witness to it. The silent revolutions of the firma- 
ment give it their pure testimony. Even those 
appearances in the heavens, at which superstition 
stood aghast, and imdgined that Nature was on the 
eve of giving way, are the proudest trophies of that 
stability which reigns throughout her processes— 
of that unswerving consistency wherewith she pro- 
iecutes all her movements. And the lesson that 
is thus held forth to us from the heavens above, is 



206 THE CONSTANCY OF NATUR8 

responded to by the earth below; just as the tidw 
of ocean wait the footsteps of the moon, and, by an 
attendance kept up without change or intermission 
for thousands of years, would seem to connect the 
regularity of earth with the regularity of heaven. 
But, apart from these greater and simpler energies, 
we see a course and a uniformity everywhere. We 
recognise it in the mysteries of vegetation. We 
follow it through the successive stages of growth, 
and maturity, and decay, both in plants and animals. 
We discern it still more palpably in that, beautiful 
circulation of the element of water, as it rolls its 
way by many thousand channels to the ocean— 
and, from the surface of this expanded reservoir, 
is agam uplifted to the higher regions of the atmo- 
sphere — and is there dispersed in light and fleecy 
magazines over the four quarters of the globe — 
and at length accomplishes its orbit, by falling in 
showers on a world fhat waits to be refreshed by 
it. And all goes to impress us with the rtigularity 
of Nature, which in fact teems, throughout all its 
varieties, with power, and principle, and uniform 
laws of operation — and is viewed by us as a vast 
laboratory, ?.ll the progressions of which have a 
rigid and unfailing necessity stamped upon them. 

Now, this contemplation has at times served to 
foster the atheism of philosophers. It has led 
them to deify Nature, and to make her immutability 
stand in the place of God. They seem imprest 
with the imagination, that had the Supreme Cause 
been a Being who thinks, and wills, and acts as 
man does, on the impulse of a felt and a present 
motive, there would be more the appearance of 



AND FAITHFULNESS OF GOD. 207 

spontaneous activity, and less of mute and uncon^ 
scious mechanism in the administrations of the 
universe. It is the very unchangeableness of Na- 
ture, and the steadfastness of those great and mighty 
processes wherewith no Uving power that is superior 
to Nature, and is able to shift or to control her, is 
seen to interfere — it is this which seems to have 
imprest the notion of some blind and eternal fatality 
on certain men of loftiest but deluded genius. And, 
accordingly, in France, where the physical sciences 
have, of late, been the most cultivated, have there 
also been the most daring avowals of atheism. The 
universe has been affirmed to be an everlasting and 
indestructible effect; and from the abiding constancy 
that is seen in Nature, through all her departments, 
have they inferred, that thus it has always been, 
and that thus it will ever be. 

But this atheistical impression that is derived 
from the constancy of Nature is not peculiar to the 
disciples of philosophy. It is the familiar and the 
practical impression of every-day life. The world 
is apprehended to move on S'teady and unvarying 
principles of its own ; and these secondary causes 
have usurped, in man's estimation, the throne of 
the Divinity. Nature in fact is personified into 
God: and as we look to the performance of a 
machine without thinking of its maker, — so the very 
exactness and certainty, wherewith the machinery 
of creation performs its evolutions, has thrown a 
disguise over the agency of the Creator. Should 
God interpose by miracle, or interfere by some 
striking and special manifestation of pi evidence, 
then man is awakened to the recognitior. of him 



208 THE CONSTANCY OF NATURE 

But he loses sight of the Being who sits behind 
these visible elements, while he regards those attri. 
butes of constancy and power which appear in the 
elements themselves. They see no demonstration 
of a God, and they feel no need of Him, while such 
unchanging, and such unfailing energy continues 
to operate in the visible world around them ; and 
we need not go to the schools of ratiocination in 
quest of this infidelity, but may detect it in the 
bosoms of simple and unlettered men, who, unknown 
to themselves, make a god of Nature, and just be- 
cause of Nature's constancy ; having no faith in the 
unseen Spirit who originated all and upholds all, 
and that, because all things continue as they were 
from the beginning of the Creation. 

Such has been the perverse eifect of Nature's 
constancy on the alienated mind of man : but let us 
now attend to the true interpretation of it. God 
has, in the first instance, put into our minds a dis- 
position to count on the uniformity of Nature, 
insomuch that we universally look for a recurrence 
of the same event in the same circumstances. This 
is not merely the belief of experience, but the belief 
of instinct. It is antecedent to all the findings 
of observation, and may be exemplified in the 
earliest stages of childhood. The infant who makes 
a noise on the table with his hand, for the first time, 
anticipates a repetition of the noise from a repetition 
of the stroke, with as much confidence as he who 
has witnessed, for years together, the unvariableness 
wherewith these two terms of the succession have 
followed each other. Or, in other words, God, by 
putting this faith into every human creature, and 



AND FAITHFULNESS OF GOD. 209 

iwaking it a necessary part of his mental constitu- 
tion, has taught him at all times to expect the like 
result in the like circumstances. He has thus 
virtually told him what is to happen, and what he 
has to look for in every given condition— and by its 
BO happening accordingly, He just makes good the 
veracity of His own declaration. The man who 
leads me to expect that which he fails to accomplish, 
I would hold to be a deceiver. God has so framed 
the machinery of my perceptions, as that I am led 
irresistibly to expect, that everywhere events will 
follow each other in the very train in which I have 
ever been accustomed to observe them — and when 
God so sustains the uniformity of Nature, that in 
every instance it is rigidly so, He is just manifesting 
the faithfulness of his character. Were it otherwise, 
he would be practising a mockery on the expecta- 
tion which He Himself had inspired. God may 
be said to have promised to every human being, 
that Nature will be constant — if not by the whisper 
of an inward voice to every heart, at least by the 
force of an uncontrollable bias which He has im- 
pressed on every constitution. So that, when we 
behold Nature keeping by its constancy, we behold 
the God of Nature keeping by His faithfulness — 
and the system of visible things, with its general 
laws, and its successions which are invariable, instead 
of an opaque materialism to intercept from the view 
of mortals the face of the Divinity, becomes the 
mirror which reflects upon them the truth that ia 
unchangeable, the ordination that never fails. 

Conceive that it had been otherwise — first, that 
man had no faith in the constancy of Nature — then 



210 THE CONSTANCY OF NATURE 

how could all his experience have profited him? 
How could he have applied the recollections of hi« 
past, to the guidance of liis future history ? And, 
what would have been left to signalize the wisdom 
of mankind above that of veriest infancy ? Or, 
suppose that he had the implicit faith in Nature's 
constancy, but that Nature was wanting in the 
fulfilment of it — that at every moment his intuitive 
reliance on this constancy, was met by some caprice 
or waywardness of Nature, which thwarted him 
in all his undertakings — that, instead of holding 
true to her announcements, she held the children 
of men in most distressful uncertainty, by the 
freaks and the falsities in which she ever indulged 
herself — and that every design of human foresight 
was thus liable to be broken up, by ever and anon 
the putting forth of some new fluctuation. Tell 
us, in this wild misrule of elements changing their 
properties, and events ever flitting from one method 
of succession to another, if man could subsist for a 
single day, when all the accomplishments without, 
were thus at war with all the hopes and calculationa 
within. In such a chaos and conflict as this, would 
not the foundations of human wisdom be utterly 
subverted ? Would not man, with his powerfid 
and perpetual tendency to proceed on the constancy 
of Nature, be tempted, at all times, and by the 
very constitution of his being, to proceed upon a 
falsehood ? It were the way, in fact, to turn the ad- 
ministration of Nature into a system of deceit. The 
lessons of to-day, would be falsified by the eventa 
of to-morrow. He were indeed the father of liea 
who would be the author of such a regimen as this 



AND FAITHFULNESS OF GOD. 21* 

—and well may we rejoice in the strict order of the 
goodly universe which we inhabit, and regard it aa 
a noble attestation to the wisdom and beneficence 
of its great Architect. 

But it is more especially as an evidence of His 
truth, that the constancy of Nature is adverted to 
in our text. It is of His faithfulness unto all 
generations that mention is there made — and for 
the growth and the discipline of your piety, we know 
not a better practical habit than that of recogniz- 
ing the unchangeable truth of God, throughout 
your daily and hourly experience of Nature's un- 
changeableness. Your faith in it is of His working 
— and what a condition woula you have been reduc- 
ed to, had the faith which is within, not been met 
by an entire and unexpected accordancy with the 
fulfilments that are without! He has not told you 
what to expect by the utterance of a voice — but 
He has taught you what to expect by the leadings 
and the intimations of a strong constitutional 
tendency — and, in virtue of this, there is not a hu- 
man creature who does not believe, and almost as 
firmly as in his own existence, that fire will continue 
to burn, and water to cool, and matter to resist, 
and unsupported bodies to fall, and ocean to bear 
the adventurous vessel upon its surface, and the 
5olid earth to uphold the tread of his footsteps ; 
and that spring will appear again in her wonted 
smiles, and summer will glow into heat and brilU- 
ancy, and autumn will put on the same luxuriance 
as before, and winter, at its stated periods, revisit 
the world with her darkness and her storms. We 
cannot sum up these countless varieties of Nature ; 



212 THE CONSTANCY OF MATURE 

but the iiriTi expectation is, that throughout them 
all, as she has been estabhshed, so she will abiae 
to the day of her final dissolution. And we call upon 
you to recognize in Nature's constancy, the answer 
of Nature's God to this expectation. All these 
material agents are, in fact, the organs by which 
He expresses His faithfulness to the world; and that 
unveering generality which reigns and continues 
everywhere, is but the perpetual demonstration of 
a truth that never varies, as well as of laws that 
never are rescinded. It is for us, that He upholds 
tlie world in all its regularity. It is for us, tha 
He sustains so unviolably the march and the move- 
ment of those innumerable progressions, which are 
going on around us. It is in remembrance of Hi" 
promises to us, that he meets all our anticipations 
of Nature's uniformity, with the evolutions of a 
law that is unalterable. It is because He is a God 
that cannot lie, that He will make no invasion on 
that wondrous correspondency which he himself 
hath instituted between the world that is without, 
and our little world of hopes, and projects, and an- 
ticipations that are within. By the constancy of 
Nature, He hath imprinted upon it the lesson of 
His own constancy — and that very characteristic 
wherewith some would fortify the ungodliness of 
their hearts, is the most impressive exhibition which 
can be given of God, as always faithful, and always 
the same. 

This, then, is the real character which the con- 
stancy of Nature should lead us to assign to Him 
who is the Author of it. In every human under- 
standing, He hath planted a universal instinct, by 



AND FAITHFULNESS OF GOD. 213 

<ffhich all are led to believe, that Nature will perse- 
vei e in her wonted courses, and that each succession 
of cause and eflFect which has been observed by us 
in the time that is past, will, while the world 
exists, be kept up invariably, and recur in the very 
game order through the time that is to come. This 
constancy, then, is as good as a promise that He 
Las made unto all men, and all that is around us 
on earth or in heaven, proves how inflexibly the 
promise is adhered to. The chemist in his labor- 
atory, as he questions Nature, may be almost said 
to put her to the torture, when tried in his hottest 
furnace, or probed by his searching analysis, to 
her innermost arcana, she by a spark or an explo« 
sion, or an effervescence, or an evolving substance, 
makes her distinct replies to his investigations. And 
he repeats her answer to all his fellows in philos-: 
ophy, and they meet in academic state and judg- 
ment to reiterate the question, and in every quarter 
of the globe her answer is the same — so that, let 
the experiment, though a thousand times repeated, 
only be alike in all its circumstances, the result 
which Cometh forth is as rigidly alike, without de 
ficiency, and without deviation^ We know how possi- 
ble it is for these worshippers at the footstool of 
science, to make a divinity of matter; and that every 
new discovery of her secrets, should only rivet them 
more devotedly to her throne. But there is a God 
who liveth and sitteth there, and these unvarying re- 
'jponses of Nature, are all prompted by himself, and 
ai'e but the utterances of His immutability. They 
are the replies of a God who neverchanges, and who 
hath adapted the whole materialism of creation to thf 



214 THE CONSTANCY OF NATDRK 

constituticn of every mind that He hath seni. fortll 
upon it. And to meet the expectation which He 
himself hath given of Nature's constancy, is He at 
each successive instant of time, vigilant and ready 
in every part of His vast dominions, to hold oi^t to 
the eye of all observers, the perpetual and unfail.'ng 
demonstration of it. The certainties of Nature 
and of Science, are in f;ict the vocables by which 
God announces His truth to the world — and when 
told how impossible it is, that nature can fluctuate, 
we are only told how impossible it is that the God 
of N-Ature can deceive us. 

The doctrine that Nature is constant when thu« 
related, as it ought to be, with the doctrine that 
God is true, might well strengthen our confidence 
n Him anew with every new experience of our 
\istory. There is not an hour or a moment, in 
vhich we may not verify the one— and, therefore, 
not an hour or a moment in which we may not in- 
vigorate the other. Every touch, and every look, 
and every taste, and every act of converse between 
our senses and the things that are without, brings 
home a new demonstration of the steadfastness of 
Nature, and along with it a new demonstration 
both of His steadfastness and of His faithfulness, 
who is the Governor of Nature. And the same 
lesson may be fetched from times and from places, 
that are far beyond the limits of our own personal 
history. It can be drawn from the retrospect of 
past ages, where, from the unvaried currency of 
those very processes which we now behold, we may 
learn the stability of all His ways, whose goings 
forth are of old, and from everlasting. It can bo 



AND FAITHFULNESS OF GOD. 916 

gathered from the most distant extremities of the 
earth, where Nature reigns with the same unweari- 
ed constancy, as it does around us — and where 
savages count as we do on a uniformity, from which 
she never falters. The lesson is commensurate 
vith the whole system of things — and with an 
effulgence as broad as the face of creation, and as 
clear as the light which is poured over it, does it 
at once tell that Natjre is unchangeably constant, 
and that God is unchangeably true. 

And so it is, that in our text there are present- 
ed together, as if there was a tie of likeness between 
them — that the same God who is fixed as to the or- 
dinances of Nature, is faithful as to the declarations 
of His word ; and as all experience proves how 
firmly He may be trusted for the one, so is there 
an argument as strong as experience, to prove how 
firmly He may be trusted for the other. By his 
work in us. He hath awakened the expectation of 
a constancy in Nature, which He never disappoints 
By His word to us, should He awaken the expect- 
ation of a certainty in His declarations, this he will 
never disappoint. It is because Nature is ao fixed, 
that we apprehend the God of Nature to be so 
faithful. He who never falsifies the hope that hath 
arisen in every bosom, from the instinct which He 
Himself hath communicated, will never falsify the 
hope that shall arise in any bosom from the express 
utterance of His voice. Were He a God in whostj 
hand the processes of Nature were ever shifting, 
then might we conceive Him a God from whose 
mouth the proclamations of grace had the like char- 
acters of variance and vacillation. But it is ju»f 



21 6 THE CONSTANCY OF NATURE 

J>tcausd 3^ our reliance on the one, that we feel so 
much of repose in our dependence upon the other 
and the same God who is so unfailing in the or- 
dinances of His creation, do we hold to be equally 
unfailing in the ordinances of His word. 

And it is strikingly accordant with these views, 
that Nat:ire never has been known to recede front 
her cons::ancy, but for the purpose of giving place and 
demonstration to the authority of the word. Once, 
in a season of miracle, did the word take the ]itc 
eedency of Nature, but ever since hath "r^'ature 
resumed her courses, and is now proving, by her 
steadfastness, the authority of that, which she theu 
proved to be authentic by her deviations. When 
the word was first ushered in, Nature gave way 
for a period, after which she moves in her wonted 
order, till the present system of things shall pass 
away, and that fa,ith which is now upholden by 
Nature's constancy, shall then receive its accom- 
plishment at Nature's dissolution. And O how 
God magnifieth His word above all His name, 
when He tells thatheaven and earth shall pass away, 
but that His word shall not pass away — and that 
while His creation shall become a wreck, not one jot 
or one tittle of His testimony shall fail. The world 
passeth away — but the word endureth for ever — - 
and if the faithfulness of God stand forth so legibly 
on the face of the temporary world, how surely may 
we reckon on the faithfulness of that word, which 
has a vastly higher place in the counsels an J fulfil- 
ments of eternity ? 

The argument may not be comprehended by all; 
but it will not be lost, should it lead any to feel • 



AND FAITHFULNESS OF GOD. 21'i 

more emphatic certainty and meaning than before 
in the declarations of the Bible — and to conclude, 
that He, who for ages, hath stood so fixed to all 
His plans and purposes in Nature, will stand equally 
fixed to all that He proclaims, and to all that He 
promises in Revelation. To be in the hands of 
such a God, might well strike a terror into the 
hearts of the guilty — and that unrelenting deatii 
which, with all the sureness of an immutable law, is 
seen, before our eyes, to seize upon every individ- 
ual of every species of our world, full well evinces 
how He, the uncompromising Lawgiver, will execute 
every utterance that He has made against the children 
of iniquity. And, on the other hand, how this verv 
contemplation ought to encourage all who are look- 
ing to the announcements of the same God in the 
Gospel, and who perceive that there He has embark- 
ed the same truth, and the same unchangeableness, 
on the offers of mercy. All Nature gives testimony 
to this, that He cannot lie — and seeing that He has 
stamped such enduring properties on the elements 
even of our perishable world, never should I falter 
from that confidence which He hath taught me to 
feel, when I think of that property wherewith the 
blo(xl which was shed for me, cleanseth from all sin ; 
and of that property wherewith the body which was 
broken, beareth the burden of all its penalties. He 
who hath so nobly met the faith that He has given 
unto all in the constancy of Nature, by a uniformity 
which knows no abatement, will meet the faith 
that He has given unto any in the certainty of 
grace, by a fulfilment unto every believer, whi«ij 
aBows no exception. 

VOL. VII. K 



318 THE CONSTANCY OF NATURE 

And it is well to remark the difference that there 
is between the explanation given in the text, of 
Nature's constancy, and the impression whicn the 
mere students or disciples of Nature have of it. 
It is because of her c onstancy that they have been 
led to invest her, as it were, in properties of her 
own ; that they have given a kind of independent 
power and stability to matter ; that in the various 
energies which lie scattered over the field of visible 
contemplation, they see a native inherent virtue, 
which never for a single moment is slackened or 
suspended — and therefore imagine, that as no force 
from without seems net-essary to sustain, so as little, 
perhaps, is there need for any such force from with- 
out to originate. The mechanical certainty of all 
Nature's processes, as it appears in their eyes to 
supersede the demand for any upholding agency, 
so does it also supersede, in the silent imaginations 
of many, and accorling to the express and bold 
avowals of some, the demand far any creative agency. 
It is thus, that Nature is raised into a divinity, and 
has been made to reign over all, in the state and ju- 
risdiction of an eternal fatalism ; and proud Science, 
which by wisdom knoweth not God, hath, in her 
march of discovery, seized upon the invariable 
certainties of Nature, those highest characteristics 
of His authority aad wisdom and truth, as the 
instruments by which to disprove and to dethrone 
him. 

Now compare this interpretation of monstrous 
and melancholy atheism, with that which the Bible 
gives, why all things move so invariably. It ia 
because that all are th / servants. It is because 



J 



Ae(0 rAITHPULNCSS OF GOD. 310 

Ihey are all under the bidding jf i God who has 
purposes from which He never falters, and hath 
issued promises from which He never fails. It is 
because the arrangements of His vast and capacious 
household are already ordered for the best, and all 
the elements of Nature are the ministers by which 
He fulfils them. That is the master who has most 
honour and obedience from his domestics, through- 
out all whose ordinations, there runs a consistency 
fi'om which He never deviates; and He best sustains 
His dignity in the midst of them, who, by mild but 
resistless sway, can regulate the successions of 
every hour, and affix His sure and appropriate 
service to every member of the family. It is when 
we see all, in any given time, at their respective 
places, and each distinct period of the day having 
its own distinct evolution of business or recreation, 
that we infer the wisdom of the instituted govern- 
ment, and how irrevocable the sanctions are by 
which it is upholden. The vexatious alternationi 
of command and of countermand; the endless fancies 
of humour, and caprice, and waywardness, whic^ 
ever and anon break forth, to the total overthrow 
of system ; the perpetual innovations which none 
do foresee, and for which none, therefore, can pos- 
sibly be prepared— these are not more harassing to 
the subject, than they are disparaging to the truth 
and authority of the superior. It is in the bosom 
cf a well-conducted family, where you witness the 
sure dispensation of all the reward aixl encourage- 
ment which have been promised, and the unfailing 
execution of the disgrace and the dismissal that are 
held forth to obstinate disobedience. Now ihos^ 



820 THK rONSTANrV OF KATuni 

very qualities of which this uniformity is the test 
and the charactei'istic in the government of any 
human society, of these also is it the test and the 
characteristic in the government of Nature. It 
bespeaks the wisdom, and the authority, and the 
truth of Him who framed and who administers. 
Let there be a King eternal, immortal, and invisible, 
and let this universe be His empire — and in all the 
rounds of its complex but unerring mechanism, do 
I recognize him as the only wise God. In the 
constancy of Nature, do I read the constancy and 
truth of that great master Spirit, who hath imprint- 
ed His own character on all that hath emanated 
from His power ; and when told that throughout 
the mighty lapse of centuries, all the courses both 
of earth and of heaven, have been upholden as 
before, I only recognize the footsteps of Him who 
is ever the same, and whose faithfulness is unto all 
generations. That perpetuity, and order, and an- 
cient law of succession, which have subsisted so 
long, throughout the wide diversity of things, bear 
witness to the Lord of hosts, as still at the head of 
His well marshalled family. The present age is 
only re-echoing the lesson of all past ages — and 
that spectacle, which has misled those who by 
wisdom know not God, into dreary atheism, has 
enhanced every demonstration both of his vei-acity 
and power, to all intelligent worshippers. We 
know that all things continue as they were from 
the beginning of creation. We know that the whole 
of surrounding materialism stands forth, to this very 
hour, in all the inflexibiUty of her wonted characters. 
We know that heaven, and earth, and sea, still 



AND FAITHFULNESS OF GOD. 221 

discharge the same functions, and subserve the very 
same beneficent processes. We know that astron- 
omy plies the same rounds as before, that the cycles 
of the firmament move in their old and appointed 
order, and that the year circulates, as it has ever 
done, in grateful variety, over the face of an ex- 
pectant world — but only because all are of God, 
and they continue this day according to His ordin- 
ances — for all are His servants. 

Now it is just because the successions which take 
place in the economy of Nature, are so invariable, 
that we should expect the successions which take 
place in the economy of God's moral government 
to be equally invariable. That expectation which 
He never disappoints when it is the fruit of a 
universal instinct, He surely will never disappoint 
when it is the fruit of His own express and imme 
diate revelation. If because God hath so established 
it, it Cometh to pass, then of whatsoever it may 
be affirmed that God hath so said it, it will come 
equally to pass. I should certainly look for the 
same character in the administrations of His special 
grace, that I, at all times, witness in the admini- 
strations of His ordinary providence. If I see in 
the system of His world, that the law by which two 
events follow each other, gives rise to a conneciion 
between them that never is dissolved, then should 
He say in his word, that there are certain invariable 
methods of succession, in virtue of which, when the 
first term of it occurs, the second is sure at all timiia 
to follow, I should be very sure in my anticipations, 
that it will indeed be most punctually and most 
rigidly so. It is thus, that the constancy of Nature 



222 THE CONSTANCY OF NATURE 

is in fullesi harmony with the authority of Revela> 
tion — and that, when fresh from the contemplation 
of the one, I would listen with most implicit faith 
to all the announcements of the other. 

When we behold all to be so sure and settled in 
the works of God, then may we look for all being 
equally sure and settled in the word of God. riiilo- 
sophy hath never yet detected one iota of deviation 
from the ordinances of Nature — and never, there- 
fore, may we conclude, shall the experience either 
of past or future ages, detect one iota of deviation 
from the ordinances of Revelation. He who so 
pointedly adheres to every plan that 5ie hath es 
tablished in creation, will as pointedly adhei-e to 
every proclamation that He hath uttered in Scrip- 
ture. There is nought of the fast and loose in 
any of His processes — and whether in the terrible 
denunciations of Sinai, or those mild proffers of 
mercy that were sounded forth upon the world 
througii Messiah, who upholdeth all things by the 
word of His ])ower, shall we alike experience that 
God is not to be mocked, and that with Him there 
is no variableness, neither shadow of turning. 

With this certainty, then, upon our spirits, let 
us now look not to the successions which He hath 
instituted in Nature, but to the successions which 
he hath announced to us in the word of His testi- 
mony — and let us, while so doing, fix and solemnize 
our thoughts by the consideration, that as God hath 
said it, so will He do it. 

The first of these successions, then, on which 
we may count infallibly, is that which He hath pro- 
claimed between sin and punishment. The sou) 



AND FAITHFULNESS OF GOD. 223 

that sinneth it shall die. And here there is a 
common ground on which the certainties of divine 
revelation meet and are at one with the certainties 
of human experience. We are told in the Bible, that 
all have sinned, and that, therefore, death hath 
passed upon all men. The connection between 
these two terms is announced in Scripture to be 
invariable — and all observation tells us, that it is 
even so. Such was the sentence uttered in the 
hearing of our first parents ; and all history can 
attest how God hath kept by the word of His 
threatening — and how this law of jurisprudence 
from heaven is realized before us upon earth, with 
all the certainty of a law of Nature. The death 
of man is just as stable and as essential a part of 
his physiology, as are his birth, or his expansion, 
or his maturity, or his decay. It looks as much a 
thing of organic necessity, as a thing of arbitrary 
institution — and here do we see blended into one 
exhibition, a certainty of the divine word that never 
fails, and a constancy in Nature that never is 
departed from. It is indeed a striking accordancy 
that what in one view of it appears to be a uniform 
process of Nature, in another view of it, is but the 
unrelenting execution of a dread utterance from the 
God of Nature* From this contemplation may we 
gather, that God is as certain in all His words, as 
he is constant in all His ways. Men can philo- 
sophize on the diseases of the human system — and 
the laborious treatise can be written on the class, 
and the character, and the symptoms, of each of 
them — and in our hails of learning, the ample de- 
"Bionstration can be given, and "iisciples may b« 



224 THE CONSTANCY OF NATURE 

taught hew to judge and to prognosticate, and m 
Avhat appearances to read the fell precursors of 
mortahty — and death has so taken up its settled 
place among the immutabilities of Nature, that it 
is as familiarly treated in the lecture-rooms of 
science, as any other phenomena which Nature 
has to offer for the exercise of the human under- 
standing. And, O how often are the smile and the 
stoutness of infidelity seen to mingle with this ap- 
palling contemplation — and how little will its hardy 
professors bear to be told, that what gives so dread 
a certainty to their speculation is, that the God of 
Nature and the God of the Bible, are one' — that 
when they describe, in lofty nomenclature, the path 
of dying humanity, they only describe the way in 
which He fulfils upon it His irrevocable denunci- 
ation — that He is but doing now to the posterity 
of Adam what He told to Adam himself on his ex- 
pulsion from paradise — and that, if the universality 
of death prove how every law in the physics of 
creation is sure, it just as impressively proves, how 
every word of God's immediate utterance to man, 
or how every word of prophecy is equally sure. 

And in every instance of mortality which you 
are called to witness, do we call upon you to read 
in it the intolerance of God for sin, and how un- 
sparingly and unrelentingly it is, that God carries 
into effect His every utterance against it. The 
connection which He hath instituted between the 
two terms of sin and of death, should lead you 
from every appeal that is made to your senses by 
the one, to feel the force of an appeal to your 
conscience by the other. It proves the hatefuhies* 



AND FAITHI'ULNESS OF GOD. 225 

q{ sin to God, and if also proves with what unfalter- 
ing constancy God will prosecute every threat, 
until He hath made an utter extirpation of sin from 
His presence. There is nought which can make 
more palpable the way in which God keeps every 
saying in His perpetual remembrance, and as sure- 
ly proceeds upon it, than doth this universal plague 
wherewith He hath smitten every individual of our 
species, and carries oif its successive generations 
from a world that sprung from His hand in all the 
bloom and vigour of immortality. When death 
makes entrance upon a family, and, perhaps, seizes 
on that one member of it, all whose actual trans- 
gressions might be summed up in the out breakings 
of an occasional waywardness, wherewith the smiles 
of infant gaiety were chequered — still how it de- 
monstrates the unbending purposes of God against 
our present accursed nature, that in some one or 
other of its varieties, every specimen must die. 
And so it is, that from one age to another. He 
makes open manifestation to the world, that every 
utterance which hath fallen from him is sure ; and 
that ocular proof is given to the character of Him 
yvho is a Spirit, and is invisible ; and that sense 
lends its testimony to the truth of God, and the 
truth of His Scripture ; and that Nature, when 
rightly viewed, instead of placing its inquirers at 
atheistical variance with the Being who upholds it,, 
holds out to us the most impressive commentary 
that can be given, on the reverence which is due to 
all His communications, even by demonstrating, 
that faith in His word is at unison with the findiugi 
of our daily observation. 

k2 



226 THE CONSTANCY OF NATURE 

Bat God hath further said of sin and of its con- 
gequences, what no observation of ours has yet re* 
ahzed. He hath told us of the judgment that 
Cometh after death, and He hath told us of the two 
diverse paths which lead from the judgment-seal" 
unto eternity. Of these we have not yet seen the 
verification, yet surely we have now seen enough 
to prepare us for the unfailing accomplishment of 
every utterance that cometh from the lips of God. 
The unexcepted death which we know cometh 
upon all men, for that all have sinned, might well 
convince us of the certainty of that second death 
which is threatened upon all who turn not from sin 
unto the Saviour. There is an indissoluble suc- 
cession here between our sinning and our dying — 
and we ought now to be so aware of God as a God 
of precise and peremptory execution, as to look 
upon the succession being equally indissoluble, be- 
tween our dying in sin now, and rising to everlast- 
ing condemnation hereafter. The sinner who 
wraps himself in delusive security — and that, be- 
cause all things continue as they have done, does 
not reflect of this very characteristic, that it in 
indeed the most awful proof of God's immutable 
counsels, and to himself the most tremendous pre- 
sage of all the ruin and wretchedness which have 
been denounced upon him. The spectacle of 
uniformity that is before his eyes, only goes to as- 
certain that as God hath purposed, so, without 
vacillation or inconstancy, will he ever perform. He 
hath already given a sample, or an earnest of this, in 
the awful ravages of death ; and we ask the sinnei 
to behold, in the ever-recurring spectacle of moving 



AND FAITHFULNESS OF GOD. 221 

funerals, and desolated families, the token of that 
still deeper perdition which awaits him. l^et hinj 
not think that the God who deals His relentless 
inflictions here on every son and daughter of the 
ipecies, will falter there from the work of vengeance 
that, shall then descend on the heads of the impen- 
itent. O how deceived then are all those ungodly, 
who have been building to themselves a safety and 
an exemption on the perpetuity of Nature ! All the 
perpetuity which they have witnessed, is the pledge 
of a God who is unchangeable — and who, true to 
His threatening as to every other utterance which 
passes his lips, hath said, in the hearing of men and 
of angels, that the soul which is in siu shall perish 
But, secondly, there is another succession an - 
nounced to~ us in Scripture, and on the certaintj' 
of which we may place as firm a reliance as on any 
of the obsei-ved successions of Nature — even that 
which obtains between faitli and salvation. He 
who believeth in Christ, shall not perish, but shall 
have life everlasting. The same truth which God 
hath embarked on the declarations of His wrath 
against the impenitent. He hath also embarked on 
the declarations of His mercy to the believer. 
There is a law of continuity, as unfailing as any 
series of events in Nature, that binds with the 
present state of an obstinate sinner upon earth, all 
t.he horrors of his future wretchedness in hell — but 
there is also another law of continuity just as un- 
failing, that binds the present state of him who 
putteth faith in Christ here, with the triumphs and 
the transports of his coming elory hereafter. And 
thus it is, thttt what we read of God's- constaK<?v iu 



228 THE CONSTA^'3T OF NATURE 

the book of Nature, may ^ /ell strengthen our every 
assurance in the promises of the Gospel. It is not 
in the recurrence of winter alone, and its desolations, 
that God manifests His adherence to established 
processes. There are many periodic evolutions oi 
the bright and the beautiful along the march of Hia 
administrations — as the dawn of morn ; and the 
grateful access of spring, with its many hues, and 
odours, and melodies j and the ripened abundance 
of harvest ; and that glorious arch of heaven, which 
Science hath now appropriated as her own, but 
which nevertheless is placed there by God as the 
unfailing token of a sunshine already begun, and a 
storm now ended — all these come forth at appoint- 
ed seasons, in a consecutive order, yet mark the 
footsteps of a beneficent Deity. And so the 
economy of grace has its regular successions, which 
carry however a blessing in their train. The faith 
in Christ, to which we are invited upon earth, has 
its sure result, and its landing-place in heaven— 
and just with as unerring certainty as we behold 
in the courses of the firmament, will it be followed 
up by a life of virtue, and a death of hope, and a 
resurrection of joyfulness, and a voice of welcome 
at the judgment-seat, and a bright ascent into fields 
of ethereal blessedness, and an entrance upon glory, 
and a perpetual occupation in the city of the living 
God. 

To all men hath He given a faith in the con- 
stancy of Nature, and He never disappoints it. 
To some men hath He given a faith in the promises 
of the Gospel, and He is ready to bestow it upon 
ail who ask, or to perfect that which i? lacking in 



AND FAITHFULNESS OF GOD. 229 

it — and the one faith will as surely meet with its 
corresponding fulfilment as the other. The invari. 
ableness that reigns throughout the kingdom oi 
Nature, guarantees the like invariableness in the 
kingdom of grace. He who is steadfast to all His 
appointments, will be true to all His declarations — 
and those very exhibitions of a strict and undeviating 
order in our universe, which have ministered to the 
in-eligion of a spurious philosophy, form a basis on 
which the believer can prop a firmer confidence than 
before, in all the spoken and all the written testi- 
monies of God. 

With a man of taste, and imagination, and science, 
and who is withal a disciple of the Lord Jesus, sucli 
an argument as this must shed a new interest and 
glory over His whole contemplation of visible 
things. He knows of His Saviour, that by Hun 
all things were made, and that by Him too all things 
are upholden. The world, in fact, was created 
by that Being whose name is the Word ; and from 
the features that are imprinted on the one, may he 
gather some of the leading characteristics of the 
other. More expressly will he infer from that sure 
and established order of Nature, in which the 
whole family of mankind are comprehended, that 
the more special family of believers are indeed en- 
circled within the bond of a sure and a well-order- 
ed covenant. In those beauteous regularities by 
which the one economy is marked, will he be led 
to reognise the "yea" and the "amen" which are 
stamped on the other economy — and when he learna 
that the certainties of science are unfailing, doed 
he also learn that the sayings of Scripture aie un 



230 THE CONSTANCY OF NATURE 

alterable. Both he knows to emanate from the 
same source ; and every new experience of Nature's 
constancy, will just rivet him more tenaciously than 
before to the doctrine and the declarations of hia 
Bible. Furnished with such a method of interpret- 
ation as this, let him go abroad upon Nature, and 
ail that he sees will heighten and establish the hopes 
which Revelation hath awakened. Every recurrence 
of the same phenomena as before, will be to him a 
distinct testimony to the faithfulness of God. The 
very hours will bear witness to it. The lengthening 
shades of even will repeat the lesson held out to him 
by the light of early day — and when night unveils 
to his eye the many splendours of the firmament, 
will every traveller on his circuit there, speak to 
him of that mighty and invisible King, all whose 
ordinations are sure. And this manifestation from 
the face of heaven, will be reflected to him by the 
panorama upon earth. Even the buds which come 
forth at their appointed season on the leafless 
branches ; and the springing up of the flowers and 
the herbage, on the spots of ground from which 
they had disappeared; and that month of vocal 
harmony wherewith the mute atmosphere is glad- 
dened as before, with the notes of joyous festival ; 
and so, the regular march of the advancing year 
through all its footsteps of revival, and progress, 
and maturity, and decay — these are to him but the 
diversified tokens of a God whom he can trust, 
because of a God who changeth not. To hia 
eyes, the world reflects upon the word the lesson 
of Its own wondrous harmony ; and his science, 
instead of a meteor that lures from the greater 



AND FAITHFULNESS OF GOD. 231 

light of Revelation, serves him as a pedestal on 
which the stability of Scripture is more firmly up- 
holden. 

The man who is accustomed to view aright the 
uniformity of Nature's sequences, will be more im- 
pressed with the certainty of that sequence, which 
is announced in the Bible between faith and sal- 
vation — and he of all others, should re-assure his 
hopes of immortality, when he reads, that the end of 
our faith is the salvation of our souls. In this secure 
and wealthy place, let him take up his rest, and rejoice 
himself greatly with that God who has so multipli- 
ed upon him the evidences of His faithfulness. Let 
him henceforth feel that lie is in the hands of one 
who never deviates, and who cannot lie — and who, 
as He never by one act of caprice, hath mocked 
the dependence that is built on the foundation of 
human experience, so, never by one act of treach- 
ery, will He mock the dependence that is built on 
the fouudatiou of the divine testimony. And more 
particularly, let him think of Christ, who hath all 
the promises in His hand, that to Him also all 
power has been committed in heaven and in earth 
-^and that presiding therefore, as he does, over 
that visible administration, of which constancy is 
the unfailing attribute, He by this hath given us the 
best pledge of a truth that abideth the same, to 
day, and yesterday, and for ever. 

We are aware, that no argument can of itself 
work in you the faith of the Gospel — that words 
and reasons, and illustrations, may be multiplied 
without end, and yet be of no efficacy — that if the 
simple manifestation of the Spirit be withheld, the 



232 THE CONSTANCY OF NATURE 

expounder of Scripture, and of all its analogiei 
with Creation or Providence, will lose his labour 
. — and while it is his part to prosecute these to the 
uttermost, yet nought will he find more surely and 
experimentally true, than that without a special 
interposition of light from on high, he runneth in 
vain, and wearieth himself in vain. It is for him to 
ply the instrument, it is for God to give unto it the 
power which availeth. We are told of Christ on His 
throne of mediatorship, that He hath all the energies 
of Nature at command, and up to this hour do we 
know with what a steady and unfaltering hand He 
hath wielded them. Look to the promise as equally 
steadfast, of " Lo, I am with you always, even unto 
the end of the world" — and come even now to His 
own appointed ordinance in the like confidence of 
a fellowship with Him, as you would to any of the 
Bcenes or ordinations of Nature, and in the confi- 
dence that there the Lord of Nature will prove 
Himself the same that He has ever been.* The 
blood that was announced many centuries ago to 
cleanse from all sin, cleanseth still. The body 
which hath borne in all past ages the iniquity of 
believers, beareth it still. That faith which appro- 
priates Christ and all the benefits of His purchase, 
to the soul, still performs the same office. And 
that magnificent economy of Nature which was 
established at the first, and so abideth, is but 
the symbol of that higher economy of grace which 
continueth to this day according to all its ordin- 
ances. 



• This Sermon was delivered on the morning of a Commniuoa 
8abbath. 



AND FAITHFULNESS Of GOD. 233 

•• Whosoever eateth my flesh, and drinketh my 
blood," says the Saviour, " shall never die." When 
you sit down at His table, you eat the bread, and 
you drink the wine by which these are represented 
• — and if this be done worthily, if there be a right 
correspondence between the hand and the heart in 
this sacramental service, then by faith do you re- 
ceive the benefits of the shed blood, and the broken 
body ; and your so doing will as surely as any suc- 
cession takes place in the instituted courses of 
Nature, be followed up by your blessed immortality. 
And the brighter your hopes of glory hereafter, the 
holier will you be in all your acts and affections 
here. The character even now will receive a tinge 
from the prospect that is before you — and the 
habitual anticipation of heaven will bring down both 
of its charity and its sacredness upon your heart. 
He who hath this hope in him purifieth himself even 
as Christ is pure — and even from the present if a 
true approach to the gate of His sanctuary, will you 
carry a portion of His spirit aw^ay with you. la 
partaking of these His consecrated elements, you 
become partakers of his gentleness and devotion, 
and unwearied beneficence— and because like Him 
in time, you will live with Him through eternity. 



234 EFFICACY OF TRAYER 



DISCOURSE II. 

ON THE CONSISTENCY BETWEEN THE EFPI. 
CACY OF PRAYEK— AND THE UNlFORMlTt 
OF NATURE. 



** Knowing tliis fi:-!>t, that there shall come in the last days scoffen, 
walking after their own lusts, — and saying, Where is the pro- 
mise of his coming ? for since the fathers fell asleep, all thing* 
continue as they were from the beginning of the creation." — 
2 Petlr lii. 3, 4. 

The infidelity spoken of in our text, had for 
its basis tiie stability of nature, or rested on the 
imagination that her economy was perpetual and 
everlasting — and every day of nature's continuance 
added to the strength and inveteracy of this de- 
lusion. In proportion to the length of her past 
endurance, was there a^firm confidence felt in hei 
future perpetuity. The longer that nature lasted, 
or t)ie older she grew, her final dissolution waa 
held to be all the more improbable — till nothing 
seemed so unlikely to the atheistical men of that 
period, as the intervention of a God with a sys- 
tem of visible things, which looked so unchanging 
and so indestructible. It was like the contest of 
experience and faith, in which the former grew 
every day stronger and stronger, and the latter 
weaker and weaker, till at length it was wholly 
exthiguished ; and men in the spirit of defiance or 
ridicule, braved the announcement of a Judi>e who 



I 



AND UNIFORMITY OF NATURE. 234 

Bhculd appear at the end of the world, and mocked 
at the promise of His coming. 

But there is another direction which infidelity 
often takes, beside the one specified in our text. 
It not only perverts to it a own argument, what 
experience tells of the stability of nature ; and so 
concludes that we have nothing to fear from the 
mandate of a God, laying sudden arrest and ter- 
mination en its processes. It also perverts what 
experience tells of the uniformity of nature ; and 
so concludes that we have nothing either to hope 
or to fear, from the intervention of a God during 
the continuance or the currency of these processes. 
Beside making nature independent of God for 
.'ts duration, which they hold to be everlasting ; 
tliey would also make nature to be independent of 
God for its course, which they hold to be unalter- 
able. They tell us of the rigid and undeviating 
constancy from which nature is never known to 
fluctuate ; and that in her immutable laws, in the 
march and regularity of her orderly progressions, 
they can discover no trace whatever of any inter- 
position by the finger of a Deity. It is not only 
that all things continue to be, as they were from the 
beginning of creation; but that all things continue 
to act, as they did from the beginning of the 
creation — causes and effects following each other 
in wonted and invariable succession, and the same 
circumstances ever issuing in the same consequents 
as before. With such a system of things, there is 
no room in their creed or in their imagination, for 
the actings of a God. To their eye, nature pro- 
ceeds by the sure footsteps of a mute and uncou- 



J36 EFFICACY OF PRAYER 

Bcious materialism ; nor can they recognize in its 
evolutions those characters of the spontaneous or 
the wilful, which bespeak a living God to have 
had any concern with it. He may have formed 
the mundane system at the first ; he may havft 
devised for matter its properties and its laws: 
but these properties, they tell us, never change; 
these laws never are relaxed or receded from. 
And so we may as well bid the storm itself cease 
from its violence, as supplicate the unseen Being 
whom we fancy to be sitting aloft and to direct the 
storm. This they hold to be a superstitious 
imagination, which all their experience of nature 
and of nature's immutability forbids them to 
entertain. By the one infidelity, they havef 
banished a God from the throne of judgment. 
By the other infidelity, they have banished a God 
from the throne of providence. By the first they 
tell us, that a God has nought to do with the con- 
summation of nature ; or, rather, that nature has 
no consummation. By the second, they tell us 
that a God has nought to do with the history of 
nature. The first infidelity would expunge from 
our creed the doctrine of a coming judgment. The 
second would expunge from it the doctrine of a 
present and a special providence, and the doctrine 
of the efficacy of prayer. 

Now this last, though net just the infidelity of 
the text — yet being very much the same with it in 
principle — we hold it sufficiently textual, though 
we make it, and not the other the subject of our 
present argument. We admit the uniformity of 
visible nature — a lesson forced upon us by all 
experience. We admit that as far as our obser- 



AND UNIFORMITY OF NATURE. 237 

ration extends, nature has always proceeded in 
one invariable order — insomuch that the samo 
antecedents have, without exception, been ever 
followed up by the same consequents ; and that, 
saving the well accredited miracles of the Jewish 
and Christian dispensations, all things have so 
continued since the beginning of the creation. 

We admit that, never in our whole lives, have 
we witnessed as the effect of man's prayer, any 
infringement made on the known laws of the 
universe ; or that nature by receding from her 
constancy, to the extent that we have discovered 
't, has ever in one instance yielded to his supplica- 
tmg cry. We admit that by no importunity from 
the voice of faith, or from any number and com- 
bination of voices, have we seen an arrest or a 
shift laid on the ascertained courses, whether of 
the material or the mental economy ; or a single 
fulfilment of any sort, brought about in contraven- 
tion, either to the known properties of any sub- 
stance, or to the known principles of any estabhshed 
succession in the history of nature. Tiiese are our 
experiences; and we are aware the very experiences 
which ministered to the infidelity of our text, and do 
minister to the practical infideUty of thousands ia 
the present day — yet, in opposition to, or rather 
notwithstanding these experiences, universal and 
unexcepted though they be, do we affirm the 
doctrine of a superintending providence, as various 
and as special, as our necessities — the doctrine of 
a perpetual interposition from above, as manifoldly 
and minutely special, as are the believing requests 
which ascend from us to Heaven's throne. 

We feel the importance of the subject, both in 



S38 EFFICACY OF PRAYEK 

its application to the jadginent that now hang* 
over us,* and to the infidehty of the present 
times. But we cannot hope to be fully under- 
stood, without your most strenuous and sustained 
attention — an attention, however, which we request 
may be kept up to the end, even though certain 
parts in the train of observation may not have 
been followed by you. What some may lose in 
those passages, where the subject is presented in 
the form of a general argument, may agahi be 
recovered, when we attempt to establish our doc- 
trine by scripture, or to illustrate it by instances 
taken from the history of human affairs. In one 
way or other, you may seize on the reigning prin- 
ciple of that explanation, by which we endeavour 
to reconcile the efficacy of prayer with the unifor- 
mity of experience. And our purpose shall have 
been obtained, if we can at all help you to a 
greater confidence in the reality of a superintending 
providence, to a greater comfort and confidence in 
the act of making your requests known unto God. 

Let us first give our view in all its generality, 
in the hope that any obscurity which may rest 
upon it in this form, will be dissipated or cleared 
up, in the subsequent appeals that we shall make, 
both to the lessons of the Bible, and to the lessons 
of human experience. 

We grant then, we unreservedly grant, the 
uniformity of visible nature; and now let us compute 
how much, or how little, it amounts to. Grant of 
all our progressions, that, as far as our eye can 
carry us, they are invariable ; and then let us only 
• This sermon was preac'ned duiing the prevalence of cholera. 



AND UNIFORMITY OF NaTUUS. 239 

reflect how short a way we can trace any of them 
upwards. In speculating on the origui of an 
event, we may be able to assign the one which 
immediately preceded, and term it the proximate 
cause ; or even ascend by two or three footsteps, 
till we have discovered some anterior event which 
we term the remote cause. But how soon do we 
arrive at the limit of possible investigation, beyond 
which if we attempt to go, we lose ourselves 
among the depths and the obscurities of a region 
that is unknown*? Observation may conduct us a 
certain length backwards in the train of causes 
and effects ; but, after having done its uttermost, 
we feel, that, above and beyond its loftiest place 
of ascent, there are still higher steps in the train, 
which we vainly try to reach, and find them inac- 
cessible. It is even so throughout all philosophy. 
After having arrived at the remotest cause which 
man can reach his way to, we shall ever find there 
are higher and remoter causes still, which distance 
all his powers of research, and so will ever remain 
in deepest concealment from his view. Of this 
higher part of the train he has no observation. 
Of these remoter causes, and their mode of suc- 
cession, he can positively say nothing. For aught 
he knows, they may be under the immediate con- 
trol of higher beings in the universe ; or, like the 
upper part of a chain, a few of whose closing links 
are all that is visible to us, they may be directly 
appended to the throne, and at all times subject 
to the instant pleasure of a prayer-hearing God. 
And it may be by a responsive touch at the higher, 
ft.nH not the lower part of the progression, that Plo ^ 



240 EFFICACY OF PRAYER 

answers our prayers. It may be not by an act 
of intervention among those near and visible 
causes, where intervention would be a miracle ; it 
may be by an unseen, but not less effectual act 
of intervention, among the remote and therefore 
the occult causes, that He adapts Himself to the 
various wants and meets the various petitions of 
His children. If it be in the latter way that H« 
conducts the affairs of His daily government — then 
may He rule by a providence as special, as are the 
needs and the occasions of His family ; and, with 
an ear open to every cry, might He provide for 
all and administer to all, without one infringement 
on the uniformity of visible nature. If the re- 
sponsive touch be given at the lower part of the 
chain, then the answer to prayer is by miracle, or 
by a contravention to some of the known sequences 
of nature. But if the responsive touch be given at 
a sufficiently higher part of the chain, then the 
answer is as effectually made, but not by miracle, 
and without violence to any one succession of 
history or nature which philosophy has ascertained 
— because the reaction to the prayer strikes at a 
place that is higher than the highest investigations 
of philosophy. It is not by a visible movement 
within the region of human observation, but by an 
invisible movement in the transcendental region 
above it, that the prayer is met and responded to. 
The Supernal Power of the Universe, the mighty 
and unseen Being who sits aloft, and has been 
significantly styled the Cause of causes — He, in 
immediate contact with the upper extremities of 
every progression, there puts forth an overruling 



AND UNIFOKMITY OF NATURE. 241 

influence which tells and propagates downwards 
to the lower extremities ; and so, by an agency 
placed too remote either for the eye of sense or 
for all the instruments of science to discover, 
may God, in answer if He choose to prayer, fix 
and determine every series of events — of which 
nevertheless all that man can see is but the uni- 
formity of the closing footsteps — a few of the last 
causes and effects following each other in their 
wonted order. It is thus that we reconcile all 
the experience which man has of nature's unifor- 
mity, with the effect and significancy of his prayers 
to the God of nature. It is thus that at one and 
the same time, do we live under the care of a 
presiding God, and among the regularities of a 
harmonious universe. 

These views are in beautiful accordance with 
the simple and sublime theology unfolded to us ir 
the book of Job — where, whether in the movements 
of the animated kingdom below, or the great 
evolutions that take place in the upper regions of 
the atmosphere, the phenomena and the processes 
of visible nature are sketched with a masterly 
hand. It is in the midst of these scenes and im- 
pressive descriptions, that we are told — " lo these 
are parts of his ways." The translation does not 
say what parts ; but the original does. They are 
but the lower parts — the endings as it were of the 
different processes — the last and lowest footsteps, 
which are all that science can investigate ; and of 
which, throughout the whole of her limited ascent, 
she has traced the uniformity. But she has tiaced 
It a very short way : or, in the language of tb« 

VOL. VII. 1. 



242 EFFICACY OF PRAYLR 

patriarch, who estimates aright the achiev omenta 
of philosophy — how little a portion is heard of 
Him — how few the known footsteps which are 
beneath the veil to the unknown steps and workings 
which are above it ; and so, the thunder, or rather 
the inward and secret movements of His power, 
who can understand ? 

*' He bindeth up the waters in his thick clouds: 
and the cloud is not rent under them. He hold- 
eth back the face of his throne, and spreadetb his 
cloud upon it. He hath compassed the waters 
with bounds, until the day and night come to an 
end. The pillars of heaven tremble, and are 
astonished at his reproof. He divideth the sea 
with his power, and by his understanding he 
smiteth through the proud. By his spirit he hath 
garnished the heavens ; his hand hath formed the 
crooked serpent. Lo, these are parts of his ways ; 
but how little a portion is heard of him ? but the 
thunder of his power who can understand?" Job 
xxvi. 8 — 14. 

The last sentence of this magnificent passage 
were better translated thus — These are the parts, 
or the lower endings of his ways ; — but the secret 
working of his power, who can understand ? 

That part of the economy of the divine adminis- 
tration, in virtue of which God works, not without 
but by secondary causes, is frequently intimated in 
the book of Psalms. 

" Who maketh his angels spirits, his ministers a 
flaming fire." Ps. civ. 4. 

Or, as it might have been translated — " Who 
maketh the winds his messengers, and the flaming 
fire his servant." 



AND UNIFORMITY OF NATURE. 245 

But without the aid of any emendations in our 
rersion, this subserviency of visible nature to the 
invisible God, is distinctly laid before us in the 
following passages. 

" They that go down to the sea in ships, that 
do business in great waters ; These see the works 
of the Lord, and his wonders in the deep. P'or 
he contmandeth, and raiseth the stormy wind, 
which lifteth up the waves thereof. They mount 
up to the heaven, they go down again to the 
depths ; their soul is melted because of trouble. 
They reel to and fro, and stagger like a drunken 
man, and are at their wit's end. Then they cry 
unto the Lord in their trouble, and he bringeth 
them out of their distresses. He maketh the 
storm a calm, so that the waves thereof are still. 
Then are they glad, because they be quiet ; so he 
bringeth them unto their desired haven. Oh^ 
that men would praise the Lord for his goodnesf;^ 
and for his wonderful works to the children of 
men." Psalm cvii. 23 — 3L 

He raises the tempest, not without the wii'dj 
but by tiie wind. In the one way, it would have 
been a miracle ; in the other way it is aliko 
effectual, but without any change in the propt; tio3 
or laws of visible nature — without what wp com- 
monly understand by a miracle. He doe» not 
bring the vessel against the wind to its desired 
haven ; but he makes the storm a calm, and so 
the waves thereof are still. Our Saviour also 
bade the winds into peace ; and the miracle there 
lay iji the effect following on the heard utterance 
of His voice. A voice no less effectual though 
unheard by us, overrules at all times the working 



*ii44 EFFICACY OF PRAYRn 

of nature's elements ; and brings the ordinary pro- 
cesses, as well as the marked and miraculoua 
exception to them, under the control of a divine 
agency. 

" Whatsoever the Lord pleased, that did he in 
heaven, and in earth, in the seas, and all deep 
places. He causeth the vapours to ascend from 
the ends of the earth ; he maketh lightnings for 
the rain ; he bringeth the wind , out of his 
treasuries." Psalm cxxxv. 6, 7. 

Here, without any change of translation, we are 
told of the subserviency of the visible instruments, 
to the invisible but real agency of Him who wields 
them at His pleasure. In this passage, the winds 
are plainly represented to us as the messengers of 
God, and the flaming fire as his servant. He 
changes no properties, and no visible processes — 
working, not without the wind, but by it — not 
without the electric matter, but by it — not without 
the. rain, but by it — not without the vapour, but 
by it. Let the philosopher tell how far back he 
can go, in exploring the method and order of these 
respective agencies. Then we have only to point 
further back and ask — on what evidence he can 
tell, that the fiat and the finger of a God are not 
there. We grant the observed order to be 
■ji variable, save when God chooses to interpose by 
miracle. But whether he does or not — from that 
chamber of his hidden operations, which philosophy 
has not found its way to, can he so direct all, so 
subordinate all, that whatever the Lord pleases, 
that does he in heaven and in earth, in the seMA, 
and ail deep places. 



AND UNIFORMITY OF NATURE. 244 

•'Praise the Lord from the earth, ye dragons, 
and all deeps : Fire and hail ; snow and vapour ; 
Btormy wind fulfilling his word." Psalm cxlviii. 7, S'. 

The stormy wind fulfiUeth his word. i 

Our last example shall be from the New Testa- 
ment. " Nevertheless he left not himself without 
witness, in that he did good, and gave us rain 
from heaven, and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts 
with food and gladness." Acts xiv. 17. 

This last example will prepare you to go along 
with one of the particular instances we are just to 
bring forward, of a special prayer met by a special 
fulfilment. 

We are thus enabled to perceive what the 
respective provinces are of philosophy and faith. 
Every event in nature or history, has a cause in 
some prior event that went before it, and that 
again in another, and that again in another still 
higher than itself in this scale of precedency ; and 
so might we climb our ascending way from cause 
to cause, from consequent to antecedent — till the 
investigation has been carried upwards, from 
the farthest possible verge of human discovery. 
There it is that the domain of observation or of 
philosophy terminates ; but we mistake, if we 
think that there the progression, whose terms or 
whose footsteps we have traced thus far, also ter- 
minates. Beyond this limit we cannot track the 
pathway of causation— not because the pathway 
ceases, but because we have lost sight of it — 
having now retired from view among the depths 
and mysteries of an unknown region, which we, 
with our bounded faculties, cannot enter. This 



246 EFFICACY OF PRAYER 

may be termed the region of faith — placed as it 
were above the region ot" experience. The things 
which are done in the higher, have an overruUng 
influence, by hnes of transmission, on all that 
happens in the lower — yet without one breach or 
interruption to the uniformity of visible nature. 
Whatever is done in the transcendental region — 
be it by the influence of prayer ; by the immediate 
finger of God ; by the ministry of angels ; by the 
Epontaneous movements, whether of displeasure 
or of mercy above, responding to the sins or to 
the supplicating cries that ascend from earth's 
inhabitants below — that will pass by a descending 
influence into the palpable region of sense and 
observation — yet, from the moment it comes within 
its limits, will it proceed without the semblance of 
a miracle, but by the march and the movement of 
nature's regularity, to its final consummation. God 
hath in wisdom ordained a regimen of general laws; 
and, that man might gather from the memory of 
the past those lessons of observation which serve 
for the guidance of the future, He hath enacted 
that all those successions shall be invariable, which 
have their place and their fulfilment within the 
world of sensible experience. Yet God has not, 
on that account, made the world independent of 
Himself. He keeps a perpetual hold on all its 
events and processes notwithstanding. He does not 
dissever Himself, for a single instant, from the 
government and the guardianship of His own uni- 
verse ; and can still, notwithstanding all we see of 
nature's rigid uniformity, adapt the forth-goings of 
His power to all the wants and all the prayers of Hi* 



AND UNIFORMITY OF NATURE. 247 

dependent family. For this purpose, He dcies not 
reed to stretch forth His hand on the inferior and 
the visible Unks of any progression, so as to shift 
the known successions of experience ; or at all to 
intermeddle with the lessons and the laws of this 
great schoolmaster. He may work in secret, and 
yet perform all His pleasure — ^not by the achieve- 
ment of a miracle on nature's open platform ; but 
by the touch of one or other of those master springs, 
which lie within the recesses of her inner laboratory. 
There, and at His place of supernal command by 
the fountain heads of influence, He can turn 
whithersoever He will the machinery of our world, 
and without the possibility by human eye of de- 
tecting the least infringement on any of its processes 
— at once upholding the regularity of visible nature, 
and the supremacy of nature's invisible God. 

But we are glad to make our escape, and now 
to make it conclusively, from the obscurer part 
of our reasoning on this subject — although, most 
assuredly, these are not the times for passing it 
wholly by ; or for withholding aught which can 
make in favour of the much derided cause ot 
humble and earnest piety. But, instead of pro- 
pounding our doctrine in the terms of a general 
argument, let us try the effect of a few special 
instances — by which, perhaps, we might more 
readily gain the consent of your understanding to 
our views. 

When the sigh of the midnight storm sends 
fearful agitation into a mother's heart, as she 
thinks of her sailor boy. now exposed to its fury, 
OQ the waters of a distant ocean — these stern dis< 



248 EFFICACY OF PRAYER 

ciples of a hard and stern infidelity would, on thia 
notion of a r'gid and impracticable constancy iu 
nature, forbid her prayers — holding them to be as 
impotent and vain, though addressed to the God 
who has all the elements in his hand, as if lifted 
up with senseless importunity to the raving 
elements themselves. Yet nature would strongly 
prompt the aspiration ; and, if there be truth in 
our argument, there is nothing in the constitution 
of the universe to forbid its accomplishment. God 
might answer the prayer, not by unsettling the 
order of secondary causes — not by reversing any 
of the wonted successions that are known to take 
place, in the ever-restless evei'-heaving atmosphere 
— not by sensible miracle among those nearer 
footsteps which the philosopher has traced ; but by 
the touch of an immediate hand among the deep 
recesses of materialism, which are beyond the 
ken of all his instruments. It is thence that the 
Sovereign of nature might bid the wild uproar of 
the elements into silence. It is there that the 
virtue comes out of Him, which passes like a winged 
messenger from the invisible to the visible ; and, 
at the threshold of separation between these two 
regions, impresses the direction of the Almighty's 
will on the remotest cause which science can 
mount her way to. From this point in the series, 
the path of descent along the line of nearer and 
proximate causes may be rigidly invariable ; and 
in respect of the order, the precise undeviating 
order, wherewith they follow each other, all things 
continue as they were from the beginning of the 
creation. The heat, and the vapour, and the 



AN!) UNIFORMITY OF NATURE. 249 

atmospherical precipitates, and the consequent 
moving forces by which either to raise a new tem- 
pest or to lay an old one — all these may proceed, and 
without one hair-breadth of deviation, according ta 
the successions of our established philosophy — yet 
each be but the obedient messenger of that voice, 
which gave forth its command at the fountain-head 
of the whole operation ; which commissioned the 
vapours to ascend from the ends of the earth, and 
made lightnings for the rain, and brought the 
wind out of his treasuries. These are the palpa- 
ble steps of the process ; but an unseen influence, 
behind the farthest limit of man's boasted dis-« 
coveries, may have set them agoing. And that 
influence may have been accorded to prayer — the 
power that moves Him, who moves the universe ; 
and who, without violence to the known regularities 
of nature, can either send forth the hurricane over 
the face of the deep or recall it at His pleasure. 
Such is the joyful persuasion of faith, and proud 
philosophy cannot disprove it. A woman's feeble 
cry may have overruled the elemental war ; and 
hushed into silence this wild frenzy of the winds 
and the waves ; and evoked the gentler breezes 
from the cave of their slumbers ; and wafted the 
vessel of her dearest hopes, and which held the 
first and fondest of her earthly treasures, to its 
desired haven. 

And so of other prayers. It is not without in- 
strumentality, but by means of it, that they are 
answered. The fulfilment is preceded by the 
accustomed series of causes and effects ; and pre- 
ceded as far upward, as the eye of man can trace 
l2 



250 EFFICACY OF PRAYER 

the pedigree of sensible causation. Were it by a 
break an}' where in the traceable part of this series 
that tiie prayer was answered, then its fulfilment 
would be miraculous. But without a miracle the 
prayer is answered as effectually. Thus, for ex- 
ample, is met the cry of a people under famine, 
for a speedy and plenteous harvest — not by the 
instant appearance of the ripened grain, at the 
biddhig of a voice from heaven — not preternaturally 
cherished into maturity, in the midst of storms ; 
but ushered onwards, by a grateful succession of 
shower and sunshine, to a prosperous consumma- 
tion. An abundant harvest is granted to prayer- 
yet without violence, either to the laws of the vege- 
table physiology, or to any of the known laws by 
which the alterations of the weather are determined. 
It must be acknowledged by every philosopher, 
how soon it is that we arrive in both departments 
on the confines of deepest mystery : and, let the 
constancy of patent and palpable nature be as 
unaltered and unalterable as it may, God reserves 
to Himself the place of mastery and command, 
whetiier among the arcana of vegetation or the 
depths of meteorology. He may at once permit 
a most rigid uniformity to the visible workings of 
nature's mechanism — while among its invisible, 
which are also its antecedent workings. He retains 
that station of preeminence and power, whence He 
brings all things to pass according to His pleasure. 
It is not by sending bread from the upper store- 
houses of the firmament, that He answers this 
prayer. It is by sending rain and fruitful seasous. 
The intermediate machinery of nature is not cast 



AND UNIFORMITY OF NATURE. 251 

aside, but pressed into the service ; and the prayer 
is answered by a secret touch from the finger of 
the Almighty, which sets all its parts and all its 
processes agoing. With the eye of sense, man 
sees nothing but nature revolving in her wonted 
cycles, and the months following each other in 
bright and beautiful succession. In the eye of 
faith, ay and of sound philosophy, every year of 
smiling plenty upon earth is a year crowned with 
the goodness of heaven. 

But to touch on that which more immediately 
concerns us, let us now instance prayer for health. 
We ask, if here philosophy has taken possession 
of the whole domain, and left no room for the pre- 
rogatives and the exercise of faith — no hope for 
prayer ? Has the whole intermediate space 
between the first cause and the ultimate phenomena, 
been so thoroughly explored ; and the rigid uni- 
formity of every footstep in the series been so fixed 
and ascertained by observation, as to preclude the 
rationality of prayer, and leave it without a mean- 
ing, because without the possibility of a fulfilment? 
Where is the physician or the physiologist who 
can tell, that he has made the ascent from one 
prognostic or one predisposition to another — till he 
reached even to the primary fountain-head of that 
influence, which either medicates or distempers 
the human frame ; and found throughout an ada- 
mantine chain of necessity, not to be broken by the 
sufferer's imploring cry ? We ask the guardians 
of our health, how far upon the pathway of causa- 
tion, the discoveries of medical science have carried 
them ; and whether, above and beyond thei; 



252 EFFICACY OF PRAYER 

farthest look into the mysteries of our framework, 
there are not higher mysteries ; where a God may 
work in secret, and the hand of the Omnipotent be 
stretched forth to heal or to destroy ? It is thence. 
He may answer prayer. It is from this summit of 
ascendancy, that He may direct all the processes 
of the human constitution — yet without violating 
in any instance, the uniformity of the few last and 
visible footsteps. Because science has traced, and 
so far determined this uniformity, she has not 
therefore exiled God from His own universe : She 
has not forced the Deity to quit His hold of its 
machinery, or to forego by one iota the most per- 
fect command of all its evolutions. His superin- 
tendence is as close and continuous and special, as 
if all things were done by the visible intervention 
of his hand. Without superstition, with the 
fullest recognition of science in all its prerogatives 
and all its glories — might we feel our immediate 
dependence on God ; and, even in this our philo- 
sophic day, and notwithstanding all that philosophy 
has made known to us, might we still assert and 
vindicate the higher philosophy of prayer — asking 
of God, as patriarchs and holy men of old did 
before us, for safety and sustenance and health 
and all things. 

And if ever in the dealings of God with the 
people of the earth, if ever science had less of the 
territory and faith had more of it, it is in that un- 
disclosed mystery which still hangs over us ; which 
now for many months has shed baleful influences 
on your crowded city ; and whereof no man can 
tell whether in another day or another hour, il 



AND UNIFORMITY OF NATURE. 253 

might not descend with fell swoop into the midst 
of his own family — entering there with rude un- 
ceremonious footstep, and hurrying to one of its 
rapid and inglorious funerals the dearest of the 
inmates. Never on any other theme did philosophy 
make more entire demonstration of her own help- 
lessness ; and perhaps at the very first footstep of 
the investigation, or on the question of the proxi- 
mate cause, the controversy is loudest of all. But 
however justly of the proximate cause discovery 
may be made, or however remotely among the 
anterior causes the investigation might be carried, 
never will proud philosophy be able to annul the 
intervention of a God, or purchase to herself the 
privilege of mocking at the poor man's prayer. 
Indeed, amid the exuberance and variety of spe- 
culation on this unsettled and unknown subject, 
there was one remote cause assigned for this 
pestilent visitation, which, so far from shutting 
out, rather suggests and that most forcibly the 
intervention of a God immediately before it. " And 
it shall come to pass in that day, that the Lord 
shall hiss for the fly that is in the uttermost part 
of the rivers of Egypt, and for the bee that is in 
the land of Assyria : and they shall come, and 
shall rest all of them in the desolate valleys, and in 
the lioles of the rocks, and upon all thorns, and upon 
all bushes."* We hope to have made it plain to 
you, let this or any other cause be found the true 
one, that, however high the path of discovery 
may have been traced, yet higher still there is 
place for the finger of a God above to regulate all 
« Isaiab vii. 18> 19. 



2&4 EFFICACY OF PRAYER 

the designs of a special providence, and to move 
in conformity with all the accepted prayers of 
His family below. But among the scoffers of our 
latter day, even in the absence or the want of all 
discovery, the finger of a God is disowned ; and it 
seems to mark how resolute and at the same time 
how hopeless is the infidelity of modern times, that, 
just in proportion to our ignorance of all the 
secondary or the sensible causes, is our haughty 
refusal of any homage to the first cause. It is 
passing strange of this disease, that, after having 
baffled every attempt to find out its dependence on 
aught that is on earth, the idea of its dependence on 
the will of Heaven should of all others have been 
laughed most impiously to scorn. The voice of de- 
rision and defiance was first heard in our high places; 
and thence it passed, as if by infection, into general 
society. And so, many have disowned the power 
and the will of the Deity in this visitation. They 
most unphilosophically, we think, as well as im- 
piously have spurned at prayer. 

But we cannot pass away from this part of our 
subject, without adverting to a recent event, the 
thought of which is at present irresistibly obtruded 
on us, and by which this parish and congregation 
but a few weeks ago have been deprived of one of 
the most conspicuous of our office-bearers — one 
who constitutionally the kindest and most indul- 
gent of men, was the most alive of all I ever knew 
to the wants and the miseries of our common 
nature ; and who finely alive to all the impulses 
and soft touches of humanity, laboured night and 
day in the vocation of doing good continually 



AND UNIFORMITY OF NATIJRF. 25S 

But, instead of saying that he laboured, I should 
say that he luxuriated in well doing ; for never 
v/as a heart more attuned to ready and responsive 
agreement with the calls of benevolence than his, 
and sooner would I believe of nature that she had 
receded from her constancy, than of him that e'er 

" He looked unmoved on misery's languid eye. 
Or heard her sinking voice without a sigh." 

Of all the recollections which the friends either 
of my youth or of my manhood have left behind 
them in this land of dying men, there is none more 
beautifully irradiated — whether I look back on the 
mildness of his christian worth, or on those sensibili- 
ties of an open and generous and finely attempered 
spirit, which gives such a charm to human compsw 
nionship. And as the second great law is like unto 
the first ; so that love of his which went forth so 
diffusively amongst his fellows upon earth, we 
humbly hope, was at once the indication and the 
consequent of a \oye that ascended with high and 
habitual aspiration to God in heaven. It was 
through a brief and tremendous agony that he was 
carried from the world of sense to the world of 
spirits ; and yet it is a happiness to be told that the 
faith and hope of the Gospel lighted up a halo over 
his expiring moments, and that, ere death had 
closed his eyes, he through nearly an hour of 
audible prayer gave his last testimony to the truth 
as it is in Jesus.* 

• This notice refers to John Wilson, Esq., Silk merchant in 
Glasgow, who was Kirk Treasurer of St. John's, and to th« 
deep regret of all who knew him, was carried off by cholera in 
the neighbourhood of Glasgow. 



256 EFFICACY OF PRAYER 

But to recal ourselves from this theme of sadness^ 
we trust you will now understand of every event in 
nature or history, that each in the order of causa« 
tion is preceded by a train which went before it, 
and that man's observations can extend more or 
less a certain way along this train, till they are 
lost in the undiscovered and at length undis- 
coverable recesses which are placed beyond the 
cognizance of the human faculties. Now it is 
because of the higher and unknown part which 
belongs to every such series that we bid you respect 
the lessons of piety, for God hath not so con- 
structed the universe as to remove it from the 
hold of His own special management and super- 
intendence ; and therefore, not in one thing the 
Bible tells us, but in every thing we should make 
our requests known unto God. But again, it is 
because of the lower and the known or ascertained 
and strictly uniform part which belongs to every 
series, that we bid you respect the lessons of 
experience ; for God did not so conduct the affairs 
of His universe, as to thrust forth His invisible 
hand among its visible successions ; but while He 
keeps a perpetual and ascendant hold among the 
springs of that machinery which is behind the 
curtain, He leaves untouched all those wonted 
regularities, which, on the stag-e of observation, are 
patent to human eyes. Now these are the 
respective domains of philosophy and faith, and 
this is the use to be made of them. Looking to 
the one, we learn the subordination of all nature. 
Looking to the other, we learn the constancy of 
visible nature. These great truths harmonize; 



AND UNIFORMITY OF NATURE. 257 

and between the lessons which they give, there ia 
the iallest harmony. He who is enhghtened and 
acts upon both is at one and the same time a man 
of prudence and a man of prayer ; who never loses 
his confidence in God, yet, as awake to the mani- 
festations of experience as if they were the mani- 
festations of the divine will, never counts upon a 
miracle. He holds perpetual converse with heaven j 
yet shapes his earthly conduct by his earthly 
circumstances. In his habits of diligence he 
proceeds on the uniformity of visible nature, and 
he does accordingly. In his habits of devotion he 
knows that there is a visible power above which 
subordinates all nature, and he prays accordingly. 
He is neither the mystic who will not act, nor is 
he the infidel who will not pray. He knows how 
to combine both, or how to combine wisdom with 
piety — that rare and beauteous combination 
unknovrn to the world at large, yet realized by 
many a cottage patriarch, who, without attempting, 
without being capable in fact of any profound or 
philosophical adjustment between them, but on his 
simple understanding alone of Scriptm-e lessons 
and Scripture examples, unites the most strenuous 
diligence in the use of means, with the strictest 
dependence upon God. Without the combination 
of these two, there has been nothing great, nothing 
effective in the history of the church ; and, on the 
other hand, we find that all the most illustrious, 
whether in philanthropy or in christian patriotism, 
from the apostle Paul to the highest names in the 
descending history of the world, as Augustine and 
Luther and Knox and Howard, that, superadding 



258 EFFICACY OF PRAYEll 

the wisdom of experience to a sense of deepest 
piety, they were at once men of performance and 
men of prayer. 

But let us look for a moment to the highest 
example of all, even that of our Saviour when on 
earth ; for in the history of His temptation, will 
the eye of the diligent observer recognize an 
application and a moral, which serve, we think, very 
finely, to illustrate our whole argument. 

The first proposal of the adversary was, that, 
because an hungered by the abstinence of forty 
days and forty nights in the wilderness, he should 
turn stones into bread ; and the reply of our 
Saviour that " man liveth not by bread alone but 
by every word which cometh out of the mouth of 
God" bespoke His confidence in that Supreme 
Power which overrules all nature. Now observe 
how this is followed up by the tempter — since such 
His confidence I may perhaps prevail upon Him 
to cast Himself from the pinnacle of the temple, 
employing the very argument He just has used, 
even the overruling power of that God who can 
bear Him up by the intervention of angels lest He 
dash his foot against a stone. The reply " thou 
shalt not tempt the Lord thy God" tells us, that 
the same Being who overrules all nature, never 
interferes, but for some worthy and great purpose 
to thwart the established successions of visible 
nature ; and that it is wrong, it is wanton, in any 
of His creatures so to act, as if he counted upon 
such an interference. It is a noble lesson for us 
never to traverse or neglect the means which expe- 
rience hath told us arc effectual for good ; and never 



k 



AND UNirORMlTY OF NATURE. 259 

to brave, but at the call of imperious duty, the 
exposures which the same experience has told us, 
on our knowledge or recollection of Nature's 
established processes, are followed up by evil. Our 
Saviour would not, in defiance to the law of 
gravitation, cast Himself off from that place of 
security which upheld Him against its power. 
And neither should we ever, though in defiance 
but to the probable law of contagion, or by what (to 
borrow a usual phrase) might well be termed a 
tempting of Providence, refuse those places or cast 
away those measures of security, that are found to 
protect us against the virulence of this destroyer. 
In a word, between the wisdom of piety and the 
wisdom of experience there is most profound 
harmony — unknown to the infidel, and so he hath 
cast off prayer ; unknown to the fanatic, and so he 
hath cast prudence away from him. 

And we appeal to you, my brethren, if there be 
not much in the state and recent history of our 
nation to confirm these views. We rejoiced in the 
appointment several months ago of a national fast, 
and that notwithstanding the contempt and annoy- 
ance of the many infidel manifestations to which 
the appointment had been exposed — hoping, as 
we then did, that it would meet with a duteous 
and a general response from the people of the land ; 
and perceiving afterwards, in our limited sphere, 
the obvious solemnity, and we trust in a goodly 
number of instances, the deep and heart-felt 
sacredness of its observation among our families. 
It is well that there should be a public and a prayer- 
ful recognition of God in the midst of us ; and a^ 



260 EFFICACY OF PRAYER 

have failed in our argument, we have failed, 
whether from the obscurity of its illustrations or 
the obscurity of its terms, in obtaining for it the 
sympathy of your understandings— if you perceive 
not, that, in the distinct relation of cause and effect, 
there is a real substantive connection between the 
supplications which ascend for health and safety 
from the midst of a land, and the actual warding 
off of disease and death from its habitations. But 
in fullest harmony with this it is also well, I would 
go farther and say there is no infringement upon 
deepest piety in pronouncing it indispensable — that 
while we invoke the Heavenly Agent who sitteth 
above for every effectual blessing, all the earthly 
means and earthly instruments should be in com- 
plete and orderly preparation. We are aware that 
in many places and on many occasions these have 
been rebelled against.* And it but enhances the les- 
son, beside carrying amost impressive rebuke, both 
to the fanaticism of an ill-understood Christianity; 
and to the ignorant frenzy of an ill-educated and, 
in respect to the woeful deficiency both of churches 
and schools, we would say a neglected population 
— that just in those places where the offered help 
of the physician was most strenuously and most 



♦ In Edinburs^h the metropolis of medical science, a vigoroui 
•ystem of expedients was instituted ; and nothing could exceed tha 
promptitude and the watchfulness and the activitv, atamoment'i 
Cfill, wherewith the disease was met and repressed at every peint 
of its outbreakiuj^s. And we cannot imagine a more striking 
demonstration for the importance of human agency, diligently 
operating on all the resources which Nature and experience have 
placed within our reach, tiian is furnished by a comparison between 
the perfection of our city arrangements, and the fewness of out 
citj deaths. 



AND UNIFORMITY OF NATUEE. 261 

ungratefully resisted, and at times indeed by 
violence overborne, that there it was where the 
disease reasserted its power, and as if with the 
hand of an avenger shook menace and terror among 
the families. As if the same God who bids us ia 
His word make request unto Him in all things, 
would furthermore tell us by His Providence, that. 
In no one thing will He permit a heedless invasion 
on the regularities of that course which He Himself 
has established ; that with His own hand He 
ordained the footsteps of Nature, and He will 
chastise the presumption of those who shall think 
to contravene the ordinance ; that experience is 
the school-master authorized by Him for the 
government and guidance of His family on earth, 
and that He will resent the outrage done to her 
authority whenever her lessons or her laws are 
wantonly violated. 

In conclusion let us observe, that, on theone hand, 
we shall be glad if aught that has been said will 
help to conciliate our mere religionists to the lessons 
of experience and of sound philosophy ; and, in 
opposition to those senseless prejudices, by which 
they have often brought the most unmerited deri- 
sion and discredit on their own cause, we would 
remind them that it is not all philosophy which 
Scripture denounces, but only vain philosophy — it 
is not all science which it deprecates, but only the 
science falsely so called. On the other hand we 
should rejoice in witnessing the mere philosopher, 
or man of secular and experimental wisdom, more 
conciliated than he is to the lessons of Religion, 
and to that humble faith which is the grent and 



262 EFFICACY OF PRAYER, &C. 

actuating spirit of its observations and its pieilffa 
and its prayers. We have heard that the study of 
Natural Science disposes to Infidelity. But we 
feel persuaded that this is a danger only associated 
with a slight and partial, never with a deep and 
adequate and comprehensive view of its principles. 
It is very possible that the conjunction between 
science and scepticism may at present be more 
frequently realised than in former days ; but this is 
only because, in spite of all that is alleged about this 
our more enlig'itened day and more enlightened 
public, our science is neither so deeply founded nor 
of such firm and thorough staple as it wont to be. 
We have lost in depth what we have gained in 
diffusion — having neither the massive erudition, nor 
the gigantic scholarship, nor the profound and 
well-laid philosophy of a period that has now gone 
by ; and it is to this that infidelity stands indebted 
for her triumphs among the scoffers and the super 
fici alists of a half-learned generation. 



TRANSITORINESS OP TISIBLE THINGS. 263 



DISCOURSE III. 

THE TRANSITORY NATURE OF VISIBLE 
THINGS. 



" The things which are seen are temporal." — 2 Cob. iv. 18. 

The assertion that the things which are seen are 
temporal, holds true in the absolute and universal 
sense of it. They had a beginning, and they will 
have an end. Should we go upward through the 
stream of ages that are past, we come to a time 
when they were not. Should we go onward through 
the stream of ages that are before us, we come to 
a time when they will be no more. It is indeed a 
most mysterious flight which the imagination ven- 
tures upon, when it goes back to the eternity that 
is behind us — when it mounts its ascending way 
through the millions and the millions of years that 
are already gone through, and stop where it may, 
it finds the line of its march always lengthening 
beyond it, and losing itself in the obscurity of as 
far removed a distance as ever. It soon reaches 
the commencement of visible things, or that point 
in its progress when God made the heavens and 
the earth. They had a beginning, but God had 
none ; and what a wonderful field for the fancy to 
expatiate on, when we get above the era of created 
worlds, and think of that period when, in respect 
of all that is visible, the immensity around us wa» 



264 TRANSITORINESS OF VISIBLE THINGS. 

one vast and unpeopled solitude. But God was 
there in his dwelling place, for it is said of Him, 
that He inhabits eternity ; and the Son of God was 
there, for we read of the glory which He had with 
the Father before the world was. The mind cannot 
sustain itself under the burden of these lofty contem- 
plations. It cannot lift the curtain which shrouds 
the past eternity of God. But it is good for the 
soul to be humbled under a sense of its incapacity. 
It is good to realize the impression which too often 
abandons us, that He made us, and not we ourselves. 
It is good to feel how all that is temporal lies in 
passive and prostrate subordination before the will 
of tne uncreated God. It is good to know how 
little a portion it is that we see of Him and of His 
mysterious ways. It is good to lie at the feet of 
His awful and unknown majesty — and while secret 
things belong to Him, it is good to bring with ua 
all the helplessness and docility of children to those 
revealed lessons which belong to us and to our 
children. 

But this is not the sense in which the temporal 
nature of visible things is taken up by the Apostle. 
It is not that there is a time past in which they did 
not exist — but that there is a time to come in which 
they will exist no more. He calls them temporal, 
because the time and the duration of their existence 
will have an end. His eye is full upon futurity. 
It is the passing away of visible things in the time 
that is to come, and the ever during nature of invisi- 
ble things through the eternity that is to come, 
which the Apostle is contemplating. Now, on this 
one point we say nothing about the positive anni- 



THANSITORINESS OF VISIBLE THINGS. 265 

hilation of the matter of visible things. There is 
reason for believing, that some of the matter of our 
present bodies may exist in those more glorified and 
transformed bodies which we are afterwards to 
occupy. And for any thing we know, the matter 
of the present world, and of the present system 
may exist in those new heavens and that new earth, 
wherein dwelleth righteousness. There may be a 
transfiguration of matter without a destruction of it 
— and, therefore it is, that when we assert with the 
Apostle in the text, how things seen are temporal, 
we shall not say more than that the substance of 
these things, if not consigned back again to the 
nothing from which they had emerged, will be 
employed in the formation of other things totally 
ditterent — that the change will be so great, as tnat 
all old things may be said to have passed away, and 
all things to become new — that after the wreck of 
the last conflagration, the desolated scene will be 
repeopled with other objects ; the righteous will live 
in another world, and the eye of the glorified body 
will open on another field of contemplation from 
that which is now visible around us. 

Now, in this sense of the word temporal, the 
assertion of m.y text may be carried round to all 
that is visible. Even those objects which men are 
most apt to count upon as unperishable, because, 
without any sensible decay, they have stood the 
lapse of many ages, will not weather the lapse of 
eternity. This earth will be burnt up. The light 
of yonder sun will be extinguished. These stars 
wiii cease from their twinkling. The heavens will 
•ftuss away as a scroll — and as to those solid and 

VOL.VII. id 



266 TRANSITORINESS OF VISIBLE THINGS. 

enormous masses which, like the firm world we tread 
upon, roll in mighty circuit through the immensity 
around us, it seems the solemn language of revela- 
tion of one and all of them, that from the face of 
Him who siiteth on the throne, the earth and the 
heavens will fly away, and there will be found no 
place for them. 

Even apart from the Bible, the eye of observation 
can witness, in some of the hardest and firmest 
materials of the present system, the evidence of its 
approaching dissolution. What more striking, for 
example, than the natural changes which take place 
on the surface of the world, and which prove tha 
the strongest of Nature's elements must, at last 
yield to the operation of time and of decay — xhM 
yonder towering mountain, though propped by the 
rocky battlements which surround it, must at last 
sink under the power of corruption — that eveiy 
year brings it nearer to its end — that at this moment, 
3t is wasting silently away, and letting itself dovs n 
from the lofty eminence which it now occupies- - 
that the torrent which falls from its side never ceases 
to consume its substance, and to carry it off in the 
form of sediment to the ocean — that the frost which 
assails it in winter loosens the solid rock, detaches 
it in pieces from the main precipice, and makes it 
fall in fragments to its base — that the power of the 
weather scales off the most flinty materials, and that 
the wind of heaven scatters them in dust over the 
surrounding country — that even though not antici- 
pated by the sudden and awful convulsions of the 
day of God's wrath, nature contains within itself 
the rudiments of decay — that every hill must be 



TRANSITORINESS OF VISIBLE TH'NG*. 267 

levelled with the plains, and every plain be swept 
away by the constant operation of tne rivers which 
run through it — and that, unless renewed by the 
hand of the Almighty, the earth on which we are 
now treading must disappear in the mighty roll of 
ages and of centuries. We cannot take our flight 
to other worlds, or have a near view of the changes 
to which they are liable. But surely if this world, 
which, with its mighty apparatus of continents and 
islands, looks so healthful and so firm after the 
wear of many centuries, is posting visibly to its end, 
we may be prepared to believe that the principles 
of destruction are also at work in other provinces 
of the visible creation — and that though of old God 
laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens 
are the work of his hands, yet thev shall perish ; 
yea, all of them shall wax old like a garment, and 
as a vesture shall He change them, and they shall 
be changed. 

We should be out of place in all this style of 
observation, did we not follow it up with the senti- 
ment of the Psalmist, " These shall perish, but 
thou shalt endure ; for thou art the same, and thy 
years have no end." What a lofty conception does 
it give us of the majesty of God, when we think 
how He sits above, and presides in high authority 
over this mighty series of changes — when after 
sinking under our attempts to trace him through 
the eternity that is behind, we look on the present 
system of things, and are taught to believe that 
it is but a single step in the march of His grand 
administrations through the eternity that is before 
us — when we think of this goodly universe, sum* 



268 TRANSITORINESS OF VISIBLE THINGS. 

moned into being to serve some temporary evolution 
of His great and mysterious plan — when we think 
of the time when it shall be broken up, and out of 
its disordered fragments other scenes and other 
systems shall emerge — surely, when fatigued with 
the vastness of these contemplations, it well becomes 
us to do the homage of our reverence and wonder 
to the one Spirit which conceives and animates the 
whole, and to the one noble design which runs 
through all its fluctuations. 

But there is another way in which the objects 
that are seen are temporal. The object may not 
merely be removed from us, but we may be removed 
from the object. The disappearance of this earth, 
and of these heavens from us, we look upon through 
the dimness of a far-placed futurity. It is an event, 
therefore, which may regale our imagination ; which 
may lift our mind by its sublimity ; which may 
disengage us in the calm hour of meditation from 
the littleness of life, and of its cares ; and which 
may even throw a clearness and a solemnity over 
our intercourse with God. But such an event as 
this does not come home upon our hearts with the 
urgency of a personal interest. It does not carry 
along with it the excitement which lies in the near- 
ness of an immediate concern. It does not fall 
with such vivacity upon our conceptions, as prac- 
tically to tell on our pursuits, or any of our purposes. 
It may elevate and solemnize us, but this effect is 
perfectly consistent with its having as little influence 
on the walk of the living, and the moving, and tha 
acting man, as a dream of poetry. The Preacher 
may think that he has done great things with his 



TKANSITORINESS OF VISIBLE THINGS. 269 

eloquence — and the hearers may think that great 
things have been done upon them— for they felt a 
fine glow of emotion, when they heard of God 
sitting in the majesty of His high counsels, over 
the progress and the destiny of created things. 
But the truth is, that all this kindling of devotion 
which is felt upon the contemplation of His great- 
ness, may exist in the same bosom, with an utter 
distaste for the holiness of His character ; with an 
entire alienation of the heart and of the habits from 
the obedience of His law ; and above all, with a 
most nauseous and invincible contempt for the 
spiritualities of that revelation, in which He has 
actually made known His will and His ways to us. 
The devotion of mere taste is one thing — the devo- 
tion of principle is another. And as surely as a 
man may weep over the elegant sufferings of poetry, 
yet add to the real sufferings of life by peevishness 
in his family, and insolence among his neighbours 
— so, surely may a man be wakened to rapture by 
the magnificence of God, while his life is deformed 
by its rebellions, and his heart rankles with all the 
foulness of idolatry against Him. 

Well, then, let us try the other way of bringing 
the temporal nature of visible things to bear upon 
your interests. It is true, that this earth, and 
these heavens, will at length disappear; but they 
may outlive our posterity for many generations. 
However, if they disappear not from us, we most 
certainly shall disappear from them. They will 
soon cease to be any thing to you — and though the 
splendour and variety of all that is visible around 
us, should last for thousands of cent'iries, your eyes 



270 TRANSITORINESS OF VISIBLE THINGS. ' 

will soon be closed upon them. The time is coining 
when this goodly scene shall reach its positive con- 
summation. But, in all likelihood, the time iti 
coming much sooner, when you shall resign the 
breath of your nostrils, and bid a final adieu to 
every thing around you. Let this earth, and these 
heavens be as enduring as they may, to you they 
are fugitive as vanity. Time, with its mighty 
strides, will soon reach a future generation, and 
leave the present in death and in forgetfulness behind 
it. The grave will close upon every one of you, 
and that is the dark and the silent cavern wher»5 
no voice is heard, and the light of the sun never 
enters. 

But more than this. Though we live too short 
a time to see the great changes which are carryinjj 
on in the universe, we live long enough to see many 
of its changes — and such changes too as are best 
fitted to warn and to teach us ; even the changes 
which take place in society, made up of human 
beings as frail and as fugitive as ourselves. Death 
moves us away from many of those objects which 
are seen and temporal — but we live long enough 
to see many of these objects moved away from us 
— to see acquaintances falling every year — to see 
families broken up by the rough and unsparing 
hand of death — to see houses and neighbourhoods 
shifting their inhabitants — to see a new race, and 
a new generation — and, whether in church or in 
market, to see unceasing chanoes in the faces of the 
people who repair to them. We know well, that 
there is a poetic melancholy inspired by such a 
picture as this, which is altogether unfruitful — aud 



TRANSITOniNESS OF VISIBLE THINGS. 271 

that totally apart from religion, a man may give 
way to the luxury of tears, when he thinks how 
friends drop away from him — how every year brings 
along with it some sad addition to the registers of 
death — how the kind and hospitable mansion is left 
without a tenant — and how, when you knock at a 
neighbour's door, you find that he who welcomed 
you, and made you happy, is no longer there. O 
that we could impress by all this, a salutary direc- 
tion on the fears and on the consciences of individuals 
— that we could give them a living impression of 
that coming day, when they shall severally share in 
the general wreck of the species — when each of 
you shall be one of the many whom the men of the 
next generation may remember to have lived in 
yonder street, or laboured in yonder manufactory 
— when they shall speak of you, just as you speak 
of the men of the former generation — who, when 
they died, had a few tears dropped over their 
memory, and for a few years will still continue to 
be talked of. O could we succeed in giving you 
a real and living impression of all this ; and then 
may we hope to cany the lesson of John the Baptist 
with energy to your fears, " Flee from the coming 
wrath." But there is something so very deceiving 
in the progress of time. Its progress is so gradual. 
To-day is so like yesterday that we are not sensible 
of its departure. We should make head against 
this delusion. We should turn to personal ac- 
count every example of change or of mortality. 
When the clock strikes, it should remind you ot 
the dying hour. When you hear the sound of the 
funeral bell, you should think, that in a little time 



272 TRANSTTORINESS OF VISIBLE THINGS. 

it will perform for you the same otiice. When you 
wake in the morning, you should think that there 
has been the addition of another day to the life that 
is past, and the subtraction of. another day from 
the remainder of your journey. When the shades 
of the evening fall around you, you should think of 
the steady and invariable progress of time — how the 
sun moves and moves till it will see you out — and 
how it will continue to move after you die, and see 
out your children's children to the latest generations. 
Every thing around us should impress the mutability 
of human affairs. An acquaintance dies — you will 
soon follow him. A family moves from the neigh- 
bourhood — learn that the works of man are given 
to change. New families succeed— sit loose to the 
world, and withdraw your affections from its unstable 
and fluctuating interests. Time is rapid, though 
Ave observe not its rapidity. The days that are 
past appear like the twinkling of a vision. The 
days that are to come will soon have a period, and 
will appear to have performed their course with 
equal rapidity. We talk of our fathers and our 
grandfathers, who figured their day in the theatre 
of the world. In a little time, we will be the 
ancestors of a future age. Posterity will talk of 
us as of the men that are gone — and our remem- 
brance will soon depart from the face of the country. 
When we attend the burial of an acquaintance, we 
see the bones of the men of other times — in a few 
years, our bodies will be mangled by the power of 
corruption, and be thrown up in loose and scattered 
fragments among the earth of the new made grave. 
When we wander among the tombstones of the 



TUANSITOUINESS OF VISIBLE THINGS. 273 

cliurch-yard we can scarcely follow the mutilated 
letters that compose the simple story of the inhabi- 
tant below. In a little time, and the tomb that 
covers us will moulder by the power of the seasons 
— and the letters will be eaten away — and the story 
that was to perpetuate our remembrance, will eluda 
the gaze of some future inquirer. 

We know that time is short, but none of us know 
how short. We know that it will not go beyond 
a certain limit of years ; but none of us know how 
small the number of years, or months, or days may 
be. For death is at work upon all ages. The 
fever of a few days may hurry the likeliest of us all 
from this land of mortality. The cold of a. few 
weeks may settle into some lingering but irrecover- 
able disease. In one instant the blood of him who 
has the promise of many years, may cease its 
circulation. Accident may assail us. A slight 
fall may precipitate us into eternity. An exposure 
to rain may lay us on the bed of our last sickness, 
from which we are never more to rise. A little 
spark may kindle the midnight conflagration, which 
lays a house and its inhabitants in ashes. A stroke 
of lightning may arrest the current of life in a 
twinkling. A gust of wind may overturn the vessel, 
and lay the unwary passenger in a watery grave. 
A thousa; d dangers beset us on the slippery path 
of this woi-ld ; and no age is exempted from them 
— and from the infant that hangs on its mother's 
bosom, to the old man who sinks under the decre- 
pitude of years, we see death in all its woeful and 
affecting varieties. 

You may think it strange — but even still we fear, 
M 2 



274 TRANSITORINESS OF VISIBLE THINGS. 

we may have done little in the way of sending a 
fruitful impression into your consciences. We are 
too well aware of the distinction between serious- 
ness of feeling, and seriousness of principle, to think 
that upon the strength of any such moving represen- 
tation as we are now indulging in, we shall be able 
to dissipate that confounded spell which chains you 
to the world, to reclaim your wandering affections, 
or to send you back to your week-day business 
more pure, and more heavenly. But sure we are 
you ought to be convinced, that all which binds 
you so cleavingly to the dust is infatuation and 
vanity ; that there is something most lamentably 
wrong in your being carried away by the delusions 
of time — and this is a conviction which should make 
you feel restless and dissatisfied. We are well 
aware, that it is not human eloquence, or human 
illustration, that can accomplish a victory over the 
obstinate principles of human corruption — and there- 
fore it is that we feel as if we did not advance aright 
through a single step of a sermon, unless we look 
for the influences of that mighty Spirit, who alone 
is able to enlighten and arrest you — and may 
employ even so humble an instrument as the voice 
of a fellow mortal, to send into your heart the 
inspiration of understanding. 

We now shortly insist on the truth, that the 
things which are not seen are eternal. No man 
hath seen God at any time, and He is eternal. It 
is said of Christ, " whom having not seen, we love, 
and he is the same to-day, yesterday, and for ever." 
It is said of the Spirit, that, like the wind of 
heaven, He eludes me observation, and no man 



TRANSITORINESS OF V.SIBLE THINGS. 275 

can tell of him whence He cometh, or whither He 
goeth — and He is called the Eternal Spirit, through 
whom the Son oftered Himself up without spot 
unto God. We are quite aware, that the idea 
suggested by the eternal things which are spoken 
of in our text, is heaven, with all its circumstances 
of splendour and enjoyment. This is an object 
which, even on the principles of taste, we take a 
delight in contemplating : and it is also an object 
set before us in the Scriptures, though with a very 
sparing and reserved hand. All the descriptions 
we have of heaven there, are general, very general. 
We read of the beauty of the heavenly crown, of 
the unfading nature of the heavenly inheritance, of 
the splendour of the heavenly city — and these have 
been seized upon by men of imagination, who, in 
the construction of their fancied paradise, have 
embellished it with every image of peace, and bliss, 
and loveUness ; and, at all events, have thrown over 
it that most kindling of all conceptions, the mag- 
nificence of eternity. Now, such a picture as this 
has the certain effect of ministering delight to every 
glowing and susceptible imagination. And here 
lies the deep-laid delusion, which we have occasion- 
ally hinted at. A man listens, in the first instance, 
to a pathetic and high wrought narrative on the 
vanities of time-— and it touches him even to the 
tenderness of tears. He looksj in the second 
instance, to the fascinating perspective of another 
scene, rising in all the glories of immortality from 
the dark ruins of the tomb, and he feels within him 
all those ravishments of fancy, which any vision of 
united grandeur and loveliness would inspire. T'ak« 



276 TRANSITORINESS OF VISIBLE THINGS. 

these two together, and you have a man weeping 
over the transient vanities of an ever-shifting world, 
and mixing with all this softness, an elevation oi 
thought and of prospect, as he looks through the 
v'sta of a futurity, losing itself in the mighty range 
of thousands and thousands of centuries. And at 
this point the delusion comes in, that here is a man 
who is all that religion would have him to be — a 
man weaned from the littleness of the paltry scene 
that is around him — soaring high above all the 
evanescence of things present, and tilings sensible 
— and transferring every affection of his soul to thu 
durabilities of a pure and immortal region. It 
were better if this high state of occasional impression 
on the matters of time and of eternity, had only thij 
effect of imposing the falsehood on others, that-thij 
man who was so touched and so transported, had 
on that single account the temper of a candidate 
for heaven. But the falsehood takes possessiou 
of liis own heart. The man is pleased with hia 
emotions and his tears — and the interpretation he 
puts upon them is, that they come out of the ful- 
ness of a heart all alive to religion, and sensibly 
affected with its charms, and its seriousness, and 
its principle. Now, we venture to say, that there 
may be much of all this kind of enthusiasm, with the 
very man who is not moving a single step towards 
that blessed eternity, over which his fancy delights 
to expatiate. The moving representation of th«» 
preacher may be listened to as a pleasant song— . 
and the entertained hearer return to all the invel. 
erate habits of one of the children of this world. 



TRANSITOUINESS OF VISIBLE THINGS. 277 

It is this, which makes us fear that a power of 
deceitfulness may accompany the eloquence of the 
pulpit — that the wisdom of words may defeat the 
great object of a practical work upon the conscience 
— that a something short of a real business change 
in the heart, and in the principles of acting, may 
satisfy the man who listens, and admires, and resigns 
his every feeling to the magic of an impressive 
description — that, strangely compounded beings as 
we are, broken loose from God, and proving it by 
the habitual voidness of our hearts to a sense of 
His authority, and of His will ; that blind to the 
realities of another world, and slaves to the wretched 
infatuation which makes us cleave with the full bent 
of our affections to the one by which we are visibly 
and immediately surrounded ; that utterly unable, 
by nature, to live above the present scene, while 
its cares, and its interests are plying us every hour 
with their urgency ; that the prey of evil passions 
which darken and distract the inner man, and throw 
us at a wider distance from the holy Being who for- 
bids the indulgence of them ; and yet with all this 
weight of corruption about us, having minds that 
can seize the vastness of some great conception, 
and can therefore rejoice in the expanding loftiness 
of its own thoughts, as it dwells on the wonders of 
eternity ; and having hearts that can move to the 
impulse of a tender consideration, and can, therefore, 
sadden into melancholy at the dark picture of death, 
and its unrelenting cruelties ; and having fancies 
that can brighten to the cheerful colouring of some 
pleasing and hopeful representation, and can. there- 



'"fS TRANSITORINESS OF VISIBLE THINGS. 

fore, be soothed and animated when some sketch 
is laid before it of a pious family emerging from a 
common sepulchre, and on the morning of their 
joyful resurrection, forgetting all the sorrows and 
separations of the dark world that has now rolled 
over them — O my brethren, we fear it, we greatly 
fear it, that while busied with topics such as these, 
many a hearer may weep, or be elevated, or take 
pleasure m the touching imagery that is made to 
play around him, while the dust of this perishable 
earth is all that his soul cleaves to — and its cheating 
vanities are all that his heart cares for, or his foot- 
steps follow after. 

The thing is not merely possible — but we see in 
it a stamp of likelihood to all that experience tells 
us of the nature or the habitudes of man. Is there 
no such thing as his having a taste for the beauties 
ori landscape, and, at the same time, turning with 
disgust from what he calls the methodism of peculiar 
Christianity ? Might not he be an admirer of 
poetry, and, at the same time, nauseate wi'Ji his 
whole heart, the doctrine and the language of the 
New Testament? Might not he have a fancy that 
can be regaled by some fair and well-formed vision 
of immortality — and, at the same time, have no 
practical hardihood whatever for the exercise of 
labouring in the prescribed way after the meat that 
endureth ? Surely, surely, *.his is all very possible 
— and it is just as possible, and many we believe 
to be the instances we have of it in real life, when 
an eloquent description of heaven is exquisitely felt, 
and wakens in the bosom the raptures of the sin* 



TRANSITOniNESS OF VISIBLE THINGS. ^79 

cerest admiration, among those who feel an utter 
repugnancy to the heaven of the Bible — and are 
tiot moving a single inch through the narrownesa 
of the path which leads to it. 



280 NEW HEAVENS AND NEW EABTH. 



DISCOURSE IV. 

ON THE NEW HEAVENS AND THE NEW 
EARTH. 



• Nevertheless we, according to his promise, look for new heaveni 
and a new earth, wherein dwellcth righteousness." — 2 Peteb 

There is a limit to the revelations of the Bibli) 
about futurity, and it were a mental or spiritual 
trespass to go beyond it. The reserve which it 
maintains in its informations, we also ought to main- 
tain in our inquiries — satisfied to know little on every 
subject, where it has communicated little, and feeling 
our way into regions which are at present unseen, 
no further than the light of Scripture will carry us. 
But while we attempt not to be " wise above 
that which is written," we should attempt, and that 
most studiously, to be wise up to that which is 
written. The disclosures are very few and very 
partial, which are given to us of that bright and 
beautiful economy, which is to survive the ruins of 
our present one. But, still there are such disclos- 
ures — and on the principle of the things that are 
revealed belonging unto us, we have a right to walk 
up and down, for the purpose of observation, over 
the whole actual extent of them. What is made 
known of the details of immortalif.y, is but small ia 
the amount, nor are we furnished with the materials 



NEW HEAVENS AND NEW EARTH. 281 

of any thing like a graphical or picturesque exhi- 
bition of its abodes of blessedness. But still 
somewhat is made known, and which, too, may be 
addressed to a higher principle than curiosity, 
being like every other Scripture, '* profitable both 
for doctrine and for instruction in righteousness." 

In the text before us, there are two leading points 
of information, which we should hke successively 
to remark upon. The first is, that in the new 
economy which is to be reared for the accommoda- 
tion of the blessed, there will be materialism, not 
merely new heavens, but also a new earth. The 
second is, that as distinguished from the present, 
which is an abode of rebellion, it will be an abode 
of righteousness. 

I. We know historically that earth, that a solid 
material earth, may form the dwelling of sinless 
creatures, in full converse and friendship with the 
Being who made them — that, instead of a place of 
exile for outcasts, it may have a broad avenue 
of communication with the spiritual world, for the 
descent of ethereal beings from on high — that, like 
the member of an extended family, it may shai-e in 
the regard and attention of the other members, and 
along with them be gladdened by the presence of 
Him who is the Father of them all. To inquire how 
this can be, were to attempt a wisdom beyond Scrip- 
ture : but to assert that this has been, and therefore 
may be, is to keep most strictly and modestly with- 
in the limits of the record. For, we there read, that 
God framed an apparatus of materialism, which, 
on His own surveying, He pronounced to be all 
very good, and the leading features of which may 



282 NEW HEAVENS AND NEW EARTH. 

Still be recognized among the things and the sub- 
stances that are around us — and that He created 
man with the bodily organs and senses which we now 
wear — and placed Him under the very canopy that 
is over our heads — and spread around Him a scen- 
ery, perhaps lovelier in its tints, and more smiling 
and serene in the whole aspect of it, but certainly 
made up, in the main, of the same objects that still 
compose the prospect of our visible contemplations 
— and there, working with his hands in a garden, and 
with trees on every side of him, andeven with animals 
sporting at his feet, was this inbabitant of earth, in 
the midst of all those earthly and familiar accom- 
paniments, in full possession of the best immunities 
of a citizen of heaven — sharing in the delight of 
angels, and while he gazed on the very beauties 
which we ourselves gaze upon, rejoicing in them 
most as the tokens of a pi-esent and presiding Deity. 
It were venturing on the region of conjecture to 
affirm, whether, if Adam had not fallen, the earth 
that we now tread upon, would have been the ever- 
lasting abode of him and his posterity. But certain 
it is, that man, at the first, had for his place this 
world, and, at the same time, for his privilege, 
an unclouded fellowship with God, and, for his pro- 
spect, an immortality, which death was neither to 
intercept nor put an end to. He was terrestrial 
in respect of condition, and yet celestial in respect 
both of character and enjoyment. His eye looked 
outwardly on a landscape of earth, while his heart 
breathed upwardly in the love of heaven. And 
though he trode the solid platform of our world, 
and was compassed about with its horizon — still 



NEW HEAVENS AND NEW EARTH. 283 

was he within the circle of God's favoured creation, 
and took His place among the freemen and the 
denizens of the great spiritual commonwealth. 

This may serve to rectify an imagination, of 
which we think that all must be conscious — as if 
the grossness of materialism was only for those who 
had degenerated into the grossness of sin ; and that, 
when a spiritualizing process had purged away all 
our corruption, then, by the stepping stones of a 
death and a resurrection, we should be borne away 
to some ethereal region, where sense, and body, 
and all in the shape either of audible sound, or of 
tangible substance, were unknown. And hence that 
strangeness of impression which is felt by you, 
should the supposition be offered, that in the place 
of eternal blessedness, there will be ground to walk 
upon; or scenes of luxuriance to delight the 
corporeal senses ; or the kindly intercourse of 
friends talking familiarly, and by articulate converse 
together ; or, in short, any thing that has the least 
resemblance to a local territory, filled with various 
accommodations, and peopled over its whole extent 
by creatures formed like ourselves — having bodies 
such as we now wear, and faculties of perception, 
and thought, and mutual communication, such as 
we now exercise. The common imagination that we 
have of paradise on the other side of death, is, that 
of a lofty aerial region, where the inmates float in 
ether, or are mysteriously suspended upon nothing 
— where all the warm and sensible accompaniments 
which give such an expression of strength, and 
life, and colouring, to our present habitation, are 
attenuated into a sort of spiritual element, tliat ip 



S84 vt:^ heavens and new eart». 

meagre, and imperceptible, and utterly uninviting 
to the eye of mortals here below — where every 
vestige of materialism is done away, ard nothing left 
but certain unearthly scenes that have no power of 
allurement, and certain unearthly ecstasies, with 
which it is felt impossible to sympathise. The 
holders of this imagination forget all the while, that 
really there is no essential connexion between 
materialism and sin — that the world which we now 
inhabit, had all the amplitude and solidity of its 
present materialism, before sin entered into it — 
that God so far, on tiiat account, from looking 
slightly upon it, after it had received the last touch 
of His creating hand, reviewed the earth, and the 
waters, and the lirmament, and all the green 
herbage, with the living creatures, and the man 
whom He had raised in dominion over them, and 
He saw every thing that He had made, and behold 
it was all very good. They forget that on the 
birth of materialism, when it stood out in the 
freshness of those glories which the great Architect 
of Nature had impressed upon it, that then " the 
morning stars sang together, and all the sons of 
God shouted for joy." They forget the appeals 
that are made everywhere in the Bible to this 
material workmanship — and how, from the face of 
these visible heavens, and the garniture of this earth 
that we tread upon, the greatness and the goodness 
of God are reflected on the view of His worshippers. 
No, my brethren, the object of the administration 
we sit under, is to extirpate sin, but it is not to 
sweep away materialism. By the convulsions of 
the last day, it may be shaken, and broken down 



NEW HEAVENS AND NEW EARTH. 28 

from its present arrangements; and thrown into 
such fitful agitations, as that the whole of its 
existing framework shall fall to pieces ; and with a 
heat so fervent as to melt its most solid elements, 
may it he utterly dissolved. And thus may the 
earth again become without form, and void, but 
without one particle of its substance going into 
annihilation. Out of the ruins of this second chaos, 
may another heaven and another earth be made to 
♦rise; and a new materialism, with other aspects 
if magnificence and beauty, emerge from the wreck 
i.f this mighty transformation ; and the world be 
jteopled as before, with the varieties of material 
loveliness, and space be again lighted up into a 
trmament of material splendour. 

Were our place of everlasting blessedness so 
purely spiritual as it is commonly imagined, then 
the soul of man, after, at death, having quitted his 
body, would quit it conclusively. That mass of 
materialism with which it is associated upon earth, 
and which many regard as a load and an incum- 
brance, would have leave to putrefy in the grave, 
without being revisited by supernatural power, or 
raised again out of the inanimate dust into which 
it had resolved. If the body be indeed a clog and 
a confinement to the spirit, instead of its commo- 
dious tenement, then would the spirit feel lightened 
by the departure it had made, and expatiate in all 
the buoyancy of its emancipated powers, over a 
scene of enlargement. And this is, doubtless, the 
prevailing imagination. But why then, after hav- 
ing made its escape from such a thraldom, should 
it ever recur to the prison-house of its oldmaterialisi 



286 NEW HEAVENS AND NEW EARTH. 

if a prison house it really be. Why shoufd the 
disengaged spirit again be fastened to the drag of 
that grosser and heavier substance, wliich many 
think has only the effect of weighing down its 
activity, and infusing into the pure element of mind 
an ingredient which serves to cloud and to enfeeble 
it. In other words, what is the use of a day of 
resurrection, if the union which then takes place is 
to deaden, or to reduce all those energies that a- e 
commonly ascribed to the living principle, in a state 
of separation ? But, as a proof of some metaphy- 
sical delusion upon this subject, the product, 
perhaps, of a wrong though fashionable philosopliy, 
it would appear, that to embody the spirit is not 
the stepping-stone to its degradation, but to its 
preferment. I he last day will be a day of triumph 
to the righteous — because the day of the re-entrance 
of the spirit to its much -loved abode, where its 
faculties, so far from being shut up into captivity, 
will find their free and kindred development in such 
material organs as are suited to them. The fact 
of the resurrection proves, that, with man at least, 
the state of a disembodied spirit, is a state of 
unnatural violence — and that the resurrection of his 
body is an essential step to the highest perfection 
of which he is susceptible. And it is indeed an 
homage to that materialism, which many are for 
expunging from the future state of the universe 
altogether — that ere the immaterial soul of man lias 
reached the ultimate glory and blessedness which are 
designed for it, it must return and knock at that 
very grave where lie the mouldered remains of the 
body which it wore — and there inquisition must be 



NBW HEAVENS AND NEW EARTH. 287 

made for the flesh, and the sinews, and the bones, 
which the power of coiruption has perhaps for 
centuries before, assimilated to the earth that is 
around tliem — and there, the minute atoms must be 
re-assembled into a structure that bears upon it the 
form and the hneavnents, and the general aspect of 
a man — and the soul passes into this material 
framework, which is hereafter to be its lodging- 
place for ever — and that, not as its prison, but as 
its pleasant and befitting habitation — not to be 
trammelled, as some would have it, in a hold of 
materialism, but to be therein equipped for the 
services of eternity — to walk embodied among the 
bowers of our second paradise — to stand embodied 
in the presence of our God. 

There will, it is true, be a change of personal 
constitution between a good man before his death, 
and a good man after his resurrection — not, how- 
ever, that he will be set free from his body, but 
that he will be set free from the corrupt principle 
which is in his body — not that the materialism by 
which he is now surrounded will be done away, but 
that the taint of evil by which this materialism is 
now pervaded, will be done away. Could this be 
effected without dying, then death would be no 
longer an essential stepping-stone to paradise. But 
it would appear of the moral virus which has been 
transmitted downwards from Adam, and is now 
spread abroad over the whole human family — it 
would appear, that to get rid of this, the old fabric 
must be taken down, and reared anew ; and that, 
not of other materials, but of its own materials, 
only delivered of all impurity, as if by a refining 



*rt8 NEW HEAVENS AND NEW EARTH. 

process in the sepulchre. It is thus, that what is 
*' sown in weakness, is raised in power" — and for 
this purpose, it is not necessary to get quit of 
materiahsm, but to get quit of sin, and so to purge 
materiaUsm of its malady. It is thus that the dead 
shall come forth incorruptible — and those, we are 
told, who are alive at this great catastrophe, shall 
suddenly and mysteriously be changed. While we 
are compassed about with these vile bodies, as the 
apostle emphatically terms them, evil is present, 
and it is well, if through the working of the Spirit 
of grace, evil does not prevail. To keep this 
besetting enemy in check, is the task and the trial 
of our Christianity on earth — and it is the detaching 
of this poisonous ingredient which constitutes that 
for which the believer is represented as groaning 
earnestly, even the redemption of the body that he 
now wears, and which will then be transformed into 
the likeness of Christ's glorified body. And this 
will be his heaven, that he will serve God without 
a struggle, and in a full gale of spiritual delight — 
because with the full concurrence of all the feelings 
and all the faculties of his regenerated nature. 
Before death, sin is only repressed — after the 
resurrection, sin will be exterminated. Here he 
has to maintain the combat, with a tendency to evil 
still lodging in his heart, and working a perverse 
movement among his inclinations; but after his war- 
fare in this world is accomplished, he will no longer be 
so thwarted — and he will set him down in another 
vi'orld, with the repose and the triumph of victory 
for his everlasting reward. The great constitutional 
plague of his nature will no longer trouble him ; anci 



NEW HEAVENS AND NEW EARTH. 28'i 

there will be the charm of a general affinity between 
the purity of his heart, and the purity of the element 
he breathes in. Still it will not be the purity of 
spirit escaped from materialism, but of spirit trans- 
lated into a materialism that has been clarified of 
evil. It will not be the purity of souls unclothed 
as at death, but the purity of souls that have again 
beer.i clothed upon at the resurrection. 

But the highest homage that we know of to 
materialism, is that which God, manifest in the flesh, 
has rendered to it. That He, the Divinity, should 
have wrapt His unfathomable essence in one of its 
coverings, and expatiated amongst us in the palpable 
form and structure of a man ; and that He should 
have chosen such a tenement, not as a temporary 
abode, but should have borne it with Him to t\\e 
place which He now occupies, and where He is now 
employed in preparing the mansions of His followers 
— that He should have' entered within the vail, and 
be now seated at the right hand of the Father, with 
the very body which was marked by the nails upon 
His cross, and wherewith He ate and drank after 
His resurrection — that He who repelled the imagi- 
nation of His disciples, as if they had seen a spirit, 
by bidding them handle Him and see, and subjecting 
to their familiar touch, the flesh and the bones that 
encompassed Him ; that He should now be throned 
in universal supremacy, and wielding the whole 
power of heaven and earth, have every knee to bow 
at His name, and every tongue to confess, and yet 
all to the glory of God the Father — that humanity, 
that substantial and embodied humanity, should 
tiius be exalted, and a voice of adoration from every 

VOL. VII. N 



290 NEW HEAVENS AND STEW EARTH. 

creature, be lifted up to the Lamb for ever and evei 
. — does this look like the abolition of materialism, 
after the present system of it is destroyed ; or does 
it not rather prove, that transplanted into another 
system, it will be preferred to celestial honours, and 
prolonged in immortality throughout all ages ? 

It has been our careful endeavour, in all that we 
have said, to keep within the limits of the record, 
and to offer no other remarks than thos? which may 
fitly be suggested by the circumstance, that a new 
earth is to be created, as well as anew heavens, for 
the future accommodation of the righteous. We 
have no desire to push the speculation beyond what 
is written — but it were, at the same time, well, that 
in all our representations of the immortal state, 
there was just the saine force of colouring, and the 
same vivacity of scenic exhibition, that there is in 
the New Testament. The imagination of a total 
and diametric opposition betvYeen the region of sense 
and the region of spirituality, certainly tends to 
abate the interest with which we might otherwise 
look to the perspective that is on the other side 
of the grave; and to deaden all those sympathies that 
we else might have with the joys and the exercises 
of the blest in paradise. To rectify this, it is not 
necessary to enter on the particularities of heaven 
—a topic on which the Bible is certainly most 
•paring and reserved in its communications. But 
a great step is gained, simply by dissolving the 
alliance that exists in the minds of many between 
the two ideas of sin and materialism ; or proving, 
that when once sin is done away, it consists with all 
we know of God's administration, that materialism 



KEW HEAVENS AND NEW EARTH. 291 

ehall be perpetuated in the full bloom and vigour of 
immortality. It altogether holds out a warmer and 
more alluring picture of the elysium that awaits us, 
when told, that there, will be beauty to delight the 
eye ; and music to regale the ear ; and the comfori 
that springs from all the charities of intercourse 
between man and man, holding converse as they do 
on earth, and gladdening each other with the 
benignant smiles that play on the human countenance, 
or the accents of kindness that fall in soft and 
soothing melod)'^ from the human voice. There is 
much of the innocent, and much of the inspiring, 
and much to aiFect and elevate the heart, in the 
scenes and the contemplations of materialism — and 
we do hail the information of our text, that after the 
dissolution of its present frame- work, it will again 
be varied and decked out anew in all the graces of 
its unfading verdure, and of its unbounded variety 
— that in addition to our direct and personal view 
of the Deity, when He comes down to tabernacle 
with men, we shall also have the reflection of Him 
in a lovely mirror of His own workmanship — and 
that instead of being transported to some abode of 
dimness and of mystery, so remote from human 
experience, as to be beyond all comprehension, we 
shall walk for ever in a land replenished with those 
sensible delights, and those sensible glories, which, 
we doubt not, will lie most profusely scattered over 
the " new heavens and the new earth, wherein 
dwelleth righteousness." 

II. But though a paradise of -sense, it will not 
be a paradise of sensuality. Though not so unlike 
the present world as many apprehend it, there will 



292 NEW HEAVENS AND NEW EARTH. 

be one point of total dissimilarity betwixt them. It 
is not the entire substitution of spirit for matter, 
that will distinguish the future economy from the 
present. But it will be the entire substitution of 
righteousness for sin. It is this which signalizes 
the Christian from the Mahometan paradise — not 
that sense, and substance, and splendid imagery, 
and the glories of a visible creation seen with bodily 
eyes, are excluded from it, — but that all which is 
vile in principle, or voluptuous in impurity, will be 
utterly excluded from it. There will be a firm 
earth, as we have at present, and a heaven stretched 
over it, as we have at present ; and it is not by the 
absence of these, but by the absence of sin, that the 
abodes of immortality will be characterized. There 
will both be heavens and earth, it would appear, in 
the next great administration — and with this 
specialty to mark it from the present one, that it 
will be a heavens and an earth, " wherein dwelleth 
righteousness." 

Now, though the first topic of information that 
we educed from the text, may be regarded as not 
very practical, yet the second topic on which we 
now insist, is most eminently so. Were it the great 
characteristic of that spirituality which is to obtain 
in a future heaven, that it was a spirituality of es- 
sence, then occupying and pervading the place fron» 
which materialism had been swept away, we could 
not, by any possible method, approximate the con- 
dition we are in at present, to the condition we are 
to hold everlastingly. We cannot etherealize the 
matter that is around us — neither can we attenuate 
our own bodies, nor bring down the slightest degree 



NEW HEAVENS AND NEW EARTH. 293 

of sucli a heaven to the earth that we now inhabit. 
But when we are told that materiahsm is to be kept 
up, and that the spirituahty of our future state hea 
not in the kind of substance which is to compose 
its framework, but in the character of those who 
people it- — this puts, if not the fulness of heaven, 
at least a foretaste of heaven, within our reach. 
We have not to strain at a thing so impracticable, 
as that of diluting the material economy which 
is without us — we have only to reform the moral 
economy that is within us. We are now v/alking 
on a terrestrial surface, not more compact, perhaps, 
than the one we shall hereafter walk upon, and are 
now wearing terrestrial bodies, not firmer and more 
solid, perhaps, than those we shall hereafter wear. 
It is not by working any change upon them, that 
we could realize, to any extent, our future heaven. 
And this is simply done by opening the door of our 
heart for the influx of heaven's affections — by bring- 
ing the whole man, as made up of soul, and spirit, 
and body, under the presiding authority of heaven's 
principles. 

This will make plain to you how it is, that it 
could be said in the New Testament, that the 
*' kingdom of heaven was at hand" — and how, in 
that book, its place is marked out, not by locally 
pointing to any quarter, and saying, Lo, here, or lo 
there, but by the simple affirmation that the king- 
dom of heaven is within you — and how, in defining 
what it was that constituted the kingdom of heaven, 
there is an enumeration, not of such circumstances 
as make up an outward condition, but of such ieeU 
ings and ([ualities as make up a character, even 



294 NEW HEAVENS AND NEW EaUTH. 

righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy 
Ghost — and how the ushering in of the new dis- 
pensation is held equivalent to the introduction of 
this kingdom into the world — all making it evident, 
that if the purity and the principles of heaven be- 
gin to take effect upon our heart, what is essentially 
heaven begins with us, even in this world ; that in- 
stead of ascending to some upper region, for the pur- 
pose of entering it, it may descend upon us, and 
make an actual entrance of itself into our bosoms ; 
and that so far, therefore, from that remote and 
inaccessible thing which many do regard it, it may, 
through the influence of the word which is nigh 
into you, and of the Spirit that is given to prayer, 
be lighted up in the inner man of an individual 
upon earth, whose person may even here, exemplify 
ts graces, and whose soul may even here realize a 
measure of its enjoyments. 

And hence one great purpose of the incarnation 
of our Saviour. He came down amongst us in the 
full perfection of heaven's character, and has made 
us see, that it is a character which may be em- 
bodied. All its virtues were, in his case, infused 
into a corporeal frame-work, and the substance of 
these lower regions was taken into intimate and 
abiding association with the spirit of the higher. 
The ingredient which is heavenly, admits of being 
united with the ingredient which is earthly — so 
that we, who, by nature, are of the earth, and 
earthly, could we catch of that pure and celes- 
tial element which made the man Christ Jesus 
to differ from all other men, then might we too be 
formed into that character, by which it is that the 



NEW HEAVENS AND NEW EARTH. 295 

members of the family above differ from those of 
the outcast family beneath. Now, it is expressly 
said of Him, that He is set before us as an exam- 
ple ; and we are required to look to that living ex- 
hibition of Him, where all the graces of the upper 
sanctuary are beheld as in a picture ; and instead 
of an abstract, we have in His history a familiar 
representation of such worth, and piety, and ex- 
cellence, as could they only be stamped upon our 
own persons, and borne along with us to the place 
where He now dwelleth — instead of being shunned 
as ahens, we should be welcomed and recognized 
as seemly companions for the inmates of that place 
of holiness. And, in truth, the great work of Christ's 
disciples upon earth, is a constant and busy process 
of assimilation to their Master who is in heaven. 
And we live under a special economy, that has been 
set up for the express purpose of helping it forward. 
It is for this, in particular, that the Spirit is pro- 
vided. We are changed into the image of the 
Lord, even by the Spirit of the Lord. Nursed 
out of this fulness, we grow up unto the stature of 
perfect men in Christ Jesus — and instead of heaven 
being a remote and mysterious unknown, heaven 
is brought near to us by the simple expedient of 
inspiring us where we now stand, with its love, and 
its purity, and its sacredness. We learn from 
Christ, that the heavenly graces are all of them com- 
patible with the wear of an earthly body, and the 
circumstances of an earthly habitation. It is not 
said in how mary of it& features the new earth will 
ditfer from, or be like unto the present one — but 
we, by turnmg from our iniquities unto Christ, 



296 NEW HEAVENS AND NEW EARTH. 

push forward the resemblance of the one to the 
other, in the only feature that is specified, even that 
*' therein dwelleth righteousness." 

And had we only the character of heaven, we 
should not be long of feeling what that is which 
essentially makes the comfort of heaven. " Thou 
lovest righteousness, and hatest iniquity ; therefore, 
God thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of 
gladness, above thy fellows." Let us but love the 
righteousness which He loves, and hate the iniquity 
which He hateth ; and this, of itself, would so soften 
and attune the mechanism of our moral nature, that 
in all the movements of it, there should be joy. It is 
not sufficiently adverted to, that the happiness of 
heaven lies simply and essentially in the well-going 
machinery of a well-conditioned soul — and that ac- 
coiding to its measure, it is the same in kind with 
the happiness of God, who liveth for ever in bliss 
ineffable, because He is unchangeable in being 
good, and upright, and holy. There may be audi- 
ble music in heaven, but its chief delight will be in 
tl^e music of well-poised affections, and of principles 
in full and consenting harmony with the laws of 
eternal rectitude. There may be visions of loveli- 
ness there ; but it will be the loveliness of virtue, 
as seen directly in God, and as reflected back 
again in family likeness from all His children — it 
will be this that shall give its purest and sweetest 
transports to the soul. In a word, the main re- 
ward of paradise, is spiritual joy — and that, spring- 
ing at once from the love and the possession of 
spiritual excellence. It is such a joy as sin extin- 
guishes on the moment of its entering the soul, and 



NEW HEAVENS AMD NEW EARTH. 29? 

such a joy as is again restored to the soul, and that 
immediately on its being restored to righteousness. 
It is thus that heaven may be established upon 
earth, and the petition of our Lord's prayer be 
fulfilled, " Thy kingdom come." This petition 
receives its best explanation from the one which 
follows : " Thy will be done on earth as it is done 
in heaven." It just requires a similarity of habit 
and character in the two places, to make out a 
similarity of enjoyment. Let us attend, then, to 
the way in which the services of the upper sanctuary 
are rendered — not in the spirit of legality, for this 
gendereth to bondage; but in the spirit of love, 
which gendereth to the beatitude of the affections 
rejoicing in their best and most favourite indulgence. 
They do not work there, for the purpose of making 
out the conditions of a bargain. Tiiey do not act 
agreeably to the pleasure of God, in order to obtain 
the gratification of any distinct will or distmct 
pleasure of their own, in return for it. Their will 
is, in fact, identical with the will of God. There 
is a perfect unison of taste and of inclination, be- 
tween the creature and the Creator. They are in 
their element, when they are feeling righteously, 
and doing righteously. Obedience is not drudgery, 
but delight to them ; and as much as there is of the 
congenial between animal nature, and the food that 
is. suitable to it, so much is there of the congenial 
between the moral nature of heaven, and its sacred 
employments and services. Let the will of God, 
then, be done here, as it is done there, and not only 
will character and conduct be the same here as 
there, but they will idso resemble each other in the 
arS 



298 NEW HEAVENS AND NEW EARTH. 

Style, though not in the degree of their blessednesaw 
'I'lie happiness ot heaven will be exemplified upon 
earth, along with the virtue of heaven — for, in truth, 
the main ingredient of that happiness is not given 



them in payment for work ; but it Ues in the love 
ihey bear to the work itself. A man is never 
happier than when employed in that which he likes 
best. This is all a question of taste : but should 
such a taste be given as to make it a man's meat 
and drink to do the will of his Father, then is he 
in perfect readiness for being carried upwards to 
heaven, and placed beside the pure river of water 
of life, that proceedeth out of the throne of God 
and of the Lamb. This is the way in which you 
may make a heaven upon earth, not by heaping 
your reluctant offers at the shrine of legality, 
but by serving God because you love him; and 
doing his will, because you delight to do him hon- 
our. 

And here we may remark, that the only possible 
conveyance for this new principle into the heart, 
is the Gospel of Jesus Christ, — that in no other 
way than through the acceptance of its free pardon, 
■ealed by the blood of an atonement, which exalts 
the Lawgiver, can the soul of man be both eman- 
cipated from the fear of terror, and solemnized into 
the fear of humble and holy reverence — that it is 
only in conjunction with the faith that justifies, that 
tne love of gratitude, and the love of moral esteem, 
are made to arise in the bosom of regenerated man ; 
and, therefore, to bring down the virtues of heaven, 
?-ci well as the peace of heaven, into this lower world, 
* e know not what else can be done, than to urg» 



NEW HEAVBNS AKO NEW EARTH. 299 

ttpon you the great propitiation of the New Test*. 
went — nor are we aware of any expedient by which 
all the cold and freezing sensations of legality can 
be done away, but by your thankful and uncoudif 
tioual acceptance of Jesus Christ, and him civxi^ 



300 NATURE OF THE KINGDOM OF (KtO 

DISCOURSE V. 

THE NATURE OF THE KINGDOM OP GOIX 



* For ihe kingdom of God is not in word, but in power.'*«a 
1 Corinthians iv. 20. 

There is a most important lesson to be derived 
trom the variety of senses in which the phrases 
*' kingdom of God," and " kingdom of heaven," 
are evidently made use of in the New Testament. 
If it, a*, vne time, carry our thoughts to that place 
where God sits in visible glory, and where, sur- 
founded by the family of the blessed, he presides 
in full and spiritual authority — it, at another time, 
turns our thoughts inwardly upon ourselves, and 
instead of leading us to say, Lo, here, or lo, 
there, as if to some local habitation at a distance, 
it leads us, by the declaration, that the " kingdoii 
of God is within us," to look for it into our own 
breast, and to examine whether heavenly aiFections 
have been substituted there in me place of earthly 
ones. Such is the tendency of our imagination upon 
this subject, that the kingdom of heaven is never 
mentioned, without our minds being impelled there- 
by to take an upward direction — to go aloft to that 
place of spaciousness, and of splendour, and of 
psalmody, which forms the residence of angels ; and 
where the praises both of redeemed and unfalleu 
creatures, rise in one anthem of gratulation to tb9 



NATURE OF THE KINGDOM Uif bOD. 301 

Father, who rejoices over them all. Now, it la 

evident, that in dwelUng upon such an elysium as 
this, the mind can picture to itself a thousand deli- 
cious accompaniments, which, apart from moral 
and spiritual character altogether, are fitted to regale 
animal, and sensitive, and unrenewed man. There 
may be sights of beauty and brilliancy for the eye 
There may be sounds of sweetest melody for the ear. 
There may be innumerable sensations of delight, 
from the adaptation which obtains between the 
materialism of surrounding heaven, and the mate- 
rialism of our own transformed and glorified bodies. 
There may even l*e poured upon us, in richest 
jbundance, a higher and a nobler class of enjoyments 
— and separate still from the possession of holiness, 
of that peculiar quality, by the accession of which 
a sinner is turned into a saint, and the man who, 
before, had an entire aspect of secularity and of 
the world, looks as if he had been cast over again 
in another mould, and come out breathing godly 
desires, and aspiring, with a newly created fervour, 
after godly enjoyments. And so, without any such 
conversion as this, heaven may still be conceived 
to minister a set of very refined and intellectual 
gratifications. One may figure it so formed, as to 
adapt itself to the senses of man, though he should 
possess not one single virtue of the temple, or o/ 
the sanctuary — and one may figure it to be so 
formed, as, though alike destitute of these virtues, 
to adapt itself even to the Spirit of man, and to 
many of the loftier principles and capacities of his 
nature. His taste may find an ever-recurring 
delight in the panorama of its sensible glories ; and 



302 NATURE OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 

his fancy wander untlred among all the realities and 
all the possibilities of created excellence ; and his 
understanding be feasted to ecstasy among those 
endless varieties of truth, which are ever pouring 
in a rich flood of discovery, upon his mind; and 
even his heart be kept in a glow of warm and kindly 
affection among the cordialities of that benevolence, 
by which he is surrounded. All this is possible to 
be conceived of heaven — and when we add its secure 
and everlasting exemption from the agonies of hell, 
let us not wonder, that such a heaven should be 
vehemently desired by those who have not advanced 
by the very humblest degree of spiritual preparation, 
for the real heaven of the New Testament — who 
have not the least congeniality of feeling with that 
which forms its essential and characteristic blessed- 
ness — who cannot sustain on earth for a very short 
interval of retirement, the labour and the weariness 
of communion with God — who, though they coula 
relish to the uttermost, all the sensible and all the 
intellectual joys of heaven, yet hold no taste of 
sympathy whatever, with its hallelujahs, and its 
songs of raptured adoration — and who, therefore, 
if transported at this moment, or if transported 
after death, with the frame and character of soul 
that they have at this moment, to the New Jerusa- 
lem, and the city of the living God, would positively 
find themselves aliens, and out of their kindred and 
rejoicing element, however much they may sigh 
after a paradise of pleasure, or a paradise of poetry. 
It may go to dissipate this sentimental illusion, 
a we ponder well the meaning which is often 
assigned to the kingdom of heaven in the Bible — il 



* 



NATURE OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 303 

we reflect, that it is often made to attach personally 
to a human creature upon earth — as well as to be 
situated locally in some distant and mysterious 
region away from us — that to be the subjects ot 
such a kingdom, it is not indispensable that our 
residence be within the limits of an assigned 
territory, any more, in fact, than that the subject o! 
an earthly sovereign should not remain so, though 
travelling, for a time, beyond the confines of his 
master's jurisdiction. He may, though away from 
his country in person, carry about with him in mind 
a full principle of allegiance to his country's 
sovereign — and may both, in respect of legal duty, 
and of his own most willing and affectionate com- 
pliance with it, remain associated with him both 
in heart and in political relationship. He is still a 
member of that kingdom, in the domains of which 
he was born — and in the very same way, may a man 
be travelling the journey of life in this world, and 
be all the while a member of the kingdom of 
heaven. The Being who reigns in supreme authority 
there, may, even in this land of exile and alienation, 
have some one devoted subject, who renders to the 
same authority the deference of his heart, and the 
subordination of his whole practice. The will of 
God may possess such a moral ascendancy over his 
will, as that when the one commands, the other 
promptly and cheerfully obeys. The character of 
God may stand revealed in such charms of perfec- 
tion and gracefulness to the eye of his mind, that 
oy ever looking to Him, he both loves and is made 
like unto Him. A sense of God may pervade his 
every hour, and every employment, even as it is 



304 NATURE OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 

the hand of God which preserves him continually, 
and through the actual power of God, that he livea 
and moves, as well as has his being. Such a man, 
if such a man there be on the face of our world, 
has the kingdom of God set up in his heart. He 
is already one of the children of the kingdom. He 
is not locally in heaven, and yet his heaven is begun. 
He has in his eye the glories of heaven ; though, as 
yet, he sees them through a glass darkly. He feels 
in his bosom the principles of heaven ; though still 
at war with the propensities of nature, they do not 
yet reign in all the freeness of an undisputed ascen- 
dancy. He carries in his heart the peace, and the 
joy, and the love, and the elevation of heaven ; 
though, under the incumbrance of a vile body, the 
spiritual repast which is thus provided, is not with- 
out its mixtures, and without its mitigation. In a 
word, the essential elements of heaven's reward, 
and of heaven's felicity, are all in his possession. 
He tastes the happiness of heaven in kind, thouglji 
not in its full and finished degree. When he gets 
to heaven above, he will not meet there with a 
happiness differing in character from that which he 
now feels ; but only higher in gradation. There 
may be crowns of material splendour. There may 
be trees of unfading loveliness. There may be 
pavements of emerald — and canopies of brightest 
radiance — and gardens of deep and tranquil security 
— and palaces of proud and stately decoration — 
and a city of lofty pinnacles, through which there 
unceasing flows a river of gladness, and where 
jubilee is ever rung with the concord of seraphic 
tuices. But these are only tiie accessaries of 



nATURE or THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 305 

heaven. They form not the materials of its 
substantial blessedness. Of this the man who toiia 
in humble drudgery, an utter stranger to the delights 
of sensible pleasure, or the fascinations of sensible 
glory, has got already a foretaste in his heart. It 
consists not in the enjoyment of created good, nor 
in the survey of created magnificence. It is drawn 
in a direct stream, through the channels of love 
and of contemplation, from the fulness of the Crea- 
tor. It emanates from the countenance of God, 
manifesting the spiritual glories of His holy and 
perfect character, on those whose characters are 
kindred to His own. And if on earth there is no 
tendency towards such a character — no process of 
restoration to the lost image of the Godhead — no 
delight in prayer — no relish for the sweets of inter- 
course with our Father, now Unseen, but then to be 
revealed to the view of His immediate worshippers 
— then, let our imaginations kindle as they may, 
with the beatitudes of our fictitious heaven, the true 
heaven of the Bible is what we shall never reach, 
because it is a heaven that we are not fitted to 
enjoy. 

But such a view oT the matter seems not merely 
to dissipate a sentimental illusion which obtains 
upon this subject. It also serves to dissipate a 
theological illusion. Ere we can enter heaven, 
there must be granted to ns a legal capacity of 
aamission — and Christ by His atoning death, and 
perfect righteousness, has purchased this capacity 
for those who believe — and they, by the very act of 
beUeving, are held to be in possession of it, just as 
a man by stretching out. his hand to a deed or a 



06 NATURE OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 

passport, becomes vested with all the privileges 
which are thereby conveyed to the holder. Now, 
in the zeal of controversialists, (and it is a point 
most assuredly about which they cannot be too 
zealous) — in their zeal to clear up and to demon- 
strate the ground on which the sinner's legal 
capacity must rest — there has, with many, been a 
sad overlooking of what is no less indispensable, 
even his personal capacity. And yet even on the 
lowest and grossest conceptions of what that is 
which constitutes the felicity of heaven, it would be 
nc heaven, and no place of enjoyment at all, 
without a personal adaptation on the part of its 
occupiers, to the kind of happiness which is current 
there. If that happiness consisted entirely in sights 
of magnificence, of what use would it be to confer 
a title-deed of entry on a man who w^as blind ? To 
make it heaven to him, his eyes must be opened. 
Or, if that happiness consisted in sounds of melody, 
of what use would a passport be to the man who was 
deaf? To make out a heaven for him, a change 
must be made on the person which he wears, as well 
as in the place which he occupies — and his ears 
must be unstopped. Or, if that happiness consisted 
in fresh and perpetual accessions of new and 
delightful truth to the understanding, what would 
rights and legal privileges avail to him who was 
gunk in helpless idiotism ? To provide him with 
a heaven, it is not enough that he be transported 
to a place among the mansions of the celestial : he 
must be provided with anew faculty — and, as before, 
a change behoved to be made upon the senses ; so 
now, ere heaven can be heaven to its occupier, a 



ir.lTURE OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 307 

change must be made upon his mind. And, in like 
manner, my brethren, if that happiness shall consist 
in the love of God for His goodness, and in the love 
of God for the moral and spiritual excellence which 
belongs to Him — if it shall consist in the play and 
exercise of affections directed to such objects as are 
alone worthy of their most exalted regard — if it shall 
consist in the movements of a heart now attracted 
in reverence and admiration towards all that is 
noble, and righteous, and holy — it is not enough to 
constitute a heaven for the sinner, that God is there 
in visible manifestation, or that heaven is lighted up 
to him in a blaze of spiritual glory. His heart 
must be made a fit recipient for the impression of 
that glory. Of what possible enjoyment to him ia 
heaven, as his purchased inheritance, if heaven be 
not also his precious and his much-loved home? 
To create enjoyment for a man, there must be a 
suitableness between the taste that is in him, and 
the objects that are around him. To make a 
natural man happy upon earth, we may let his taste 
alone, and surround him with favourable circura- 
stances — with smiling abundance, and merry 
companionship, and bright anticipations of fortune 
or of fame, and the salutations of public respect, 
and the gaieties of fashionable amusement, and 
the countless other pleasures of a world, which 
yields so much to delight and to diversify the short- 
lived period of its fleeting generations. To make 
ihe same man happy in heaven, it would suffice 
wmply to transmit him there with the same taste, 
md to surround him with the same circumstances. 
But God has not so ordered heaven. He will not 



308 NATURE OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 

suit the circumstance of heaven to the character of 
man — and therefore to make it, that man can be 
happy t'here, nothing remains but to suit the 
character of man to the circumstances of heaven — . 
and, therefore it is, that to bring about heaven to a 
sinner, it is not enough that there be the preparation 
of a place for him, there must be a preparation of 
him for the place — it is not enough that he be meet 
in law, he must be meet in person — it is not enough 
that there be a change in his forensic relation 
towards God, there must be a change in the actual 
disposition of his heart towards Him ; and unless 
delivered from his earth-born propensities — unless 
a clean heart be created, and a right spirit be 
renewed — unless transformed into a holy and a 
godlike character, it is quite in vain to have put a 
deed of entry into his hands — heaven will have no 
charm for him — all its notes of rapture will fall with 
tasteless insipidity upon his ear — and justification 
itself will cease to be a privilege. 

Let us cease to wonder, then, at the frequent 
application, in Scripture, of this phrase to a state 
of personal feeling and character upon earth — and 
rather let us press upon our remembrance the im- 
portant lessons which are to be gathered from such 
an application. In that passage where it is said, 
that the " kingdom of God is not meat and drink, 
but righteousness, and peace, and joy hi the Holy 
Ghost," there can be no doubt that the reference 
is altogether personal, for the apostle is hero con. 
trasting the man who, in these things, servoth 
Christ, with the man who eateth unto the Lord, or 
who eateth not unto the Lord. And in the paa* 



NATURE OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 309 

sage now before us, there can be as little doubt, that 
the reference is to the kingdom of God, as fixed 
and substantiated upon the character of the human 
soul. He was just before alluding to those who 
could talk of the things of Christ, while it remained 
questionable whether there was any change or any 
effect that could at all attest the power of these 
things upon their person and character. This is 
the point which he proposed to ascertain on his 
ext visit to them. " I will come to you shortly, 
if the Lord will, and will know not the speech of 
them which are puffed up, but the power. For 
the kingdom of God is not in word, but in power." 
It is not enough to mark you as the children of this 
kingdom ; or as those over whose hearts the reign 
of God is established ; or as those in whom a pre- 
paration is going on here for a place of glory and 
blessedness hereafter — that you know the terms of 
orthodoxy, or that you can speak its language. 
If even an actual belief in its doctrine coald reside 
in your mind, without fruit and without influence, 
this would as little avail you. But it is well to 
know, both from experience and from the information 
of Him who knew what was in man, that an actual 
belief of the Gospel, is at all times an effectual 
belief — that upon the entrance of such a belief, 
the kingdom of God comes to us with power, being 
that which availeth, even faith working by love, 
arid purifying the heart, and overcoming the world. 
One of the simplest cases of the kingdom of God 
ii; word, and not in power, is that of a child, with 
Its memory stored in passages of Scripture, and in 
all the an.swers to all the question? of ^4 substantial 



310 NATURE OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 

and well-digested catechism. In such an instance, 
the tongue may be able to rehearse the whole ex» 
pression of evangelical truth, while neither the 
meaning of the truth is perceived by the understand- 
ing, nor of consequence, can the moral influence of the 
truth be felt in the heart. The learner has got 
words, but nothing more. This is the whole fruit 
of his acquisition — nor would it make any difference, 
in as far as the effect at the time is concerned, 
though, instead of words adapted to the expression 
of Christian doctrine, they had been the words of 
a song, or a fable, or any secular narrative and 
performance whatever. This is all undeniable 
enough — if we could only prevail on many men, 
and many women, not to deny its application to 
themselves — if we could only convince our grown-up 
children of the absolute futility of many of their 
exercises — if we could only arouse from their dor- 
mancy, our listless readers of the Bible — our men, 
who make a mere piece-work of their Christianity; 
who, in making way through the Scriptures, do it 
by the page, and, in addressing prayers to their 
Maker, do it by the sentence ; with whom the per- 
usal of the sacred volume, is absolutely little better 
than a mere exercise of the lip, or of the eye, and a 
preference for orthodoxy is little better than a pre- 
ference for certain familiar and well-known sounds; 
w here the thinking principle is almost never in con- 
tact with the matter of theological truth, however 
conversant both their mouths and their memories 
may be with the language of it — so that in fact the 
doctrine by the knowledge of which, and the power 
of which it is, that we are saved, lies as effectually 



NATURE OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 311 

hidden from their minds, as if it lay wrapt in hiero- 
glyphieal obscurity ; or. as if their intellectual orgau 
was shut against all communication with any thing 
without them — and thus it is, that what is not per- 
ceived by the mental eye, having no possible o^)er« 
ation upon the mental feelings, or mental purposes, 
the kingdom of God cometh to them in word only, 
while not in power. 

But again, what is translated word in this verse, 
is also capable of being rendered by the term 
reason. It may not only denote that which consti- 
tutes the material vehicle by which the argument 
conceived in the mind of one man is translated into 
the mind of another — it may also denote the argu- 
ment itself; and when rendered in this way, it offers 
to our notice a very interesting case, of which there 
are not wanting many exempHfications. In the 
case just now adverted to, the mere word is in the 
mouth, without its corresponding idea being in the 
mind ; but in the case immediately before us, ideas 
are present as well as words, and every intellectual 
faculty is at its post, for the purpose of entertaining 
them — the attention most thoroughly awake — and 
the curiosity on the stretch of its utmost eagerness 
. — and the judgment most busily employed in the 
work of comparing one doctrine, and one declara- 
tion with another — and the reason conducting its 
long or its intricate processes — and, in a word, Ike 
whole machinery of the mind as powerfully stimu- 
lated by a theological, as it ever can be, by a 
natural or scientific speculation — and yet, with this 
seeming advancement that it makes from the lan- 
guage of Christianity to the substance of Christianity, 



312 NATURE OF THE KINGDOM OF ODD. 

what shall we think of it, if there be no advancement 
wkafeever in the power of Christianity — no accession 
to the soul of any one of those three ingredients, 
which, taken together, make up the apostle's defini- 
tion of the kingdom of God — no augmentation 
either of its righteousness, or its peace, or its joy 
in the Holy Ghost — the man, no doubt, very much 
engrossed and exercised with the subject of divinity, 
but with as little of the real spirit and character of 
divinity, thereby transferred into his own spirit, 
and his own character, as if he were equally en- 
grossed and equally exercised with the sulyect of 
mathematics — remaining in short, after all his doc- 
trinal acquisitions of the truth, an utter stranger to 
the moral influence of the truth — and proving, in 
the fact of his being practically and personally the 
very same man as before, that if the kingdom of 
God is not in word, it is as little in argument, but 
in power. 

If it be of importance to know, that a man may 
lay hold, by his memory, of all the language of 
Christianity, and yet not be a Christian — it is also 
of importance to know, that a man may lay hold, by 
his understanding, of all the doctrine of Christianity, 
and yet not be a Christian. It is our opinion, that 
in this case the man has only an apparent belief, 
without having an actual belief — that all the doctrine 
is conceived by him, without being credited by him 
—that it is the object of his fancy, without being 
the object of his faith — and that, as on the one hand, 
'f the conviction be I'eal, the consequence of another 
heart, and another character, will be sure — so, on 
the otb«r hand, and on the principle of " by their 



NATURE OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 313 

fruits shall ye know them," if he want the fruit, it 
is just because he is in want of the foundation — if 
there be no produce, it is because there is no prin- 
ciple — having experienced no salvation from sin 
here, he shall experience no salvation from the 
abode of sinners hereafter. If faith were present 
with him, he would be kept by the power of it unto 
salvation, from both — but destitute as he proves 
himself to be now of the faith which sanctifies, h© 
will be found then, in the midst of all his semblances 
and all his delusions, to have been equally destitutei 
of the faith which justifies. 

And it is, perhaps, not so difficult to stir up, in 
the mind of the learned controversialist, and the 
deeply-exercised scholar, the suspicion, that with 
all his acquirements in the lore of theology, he is, 
in respect of its personal influence upon himself, 
still in a state of moral and spiritual unsoundness 
—it is not so difficult to raise this feeling of self- 
condemnation in his mind, as it is to do it in the 
mind of him who has selected his one favourite 
article,' and there, resolved, if die he must, to die 
hard, has taken up his obstinate and immoveable 
position — and retiring within the intrenchment of 
a few verses of the Bible, will defy all the truth 
and all the thunder of its remaining declarations ; 
and with an orthodoxy which carries on all its play 
in his head, without one moving or one softening 
touch upon his heart, will stand out to the eye of 
the world, both in avowed principle, and in its 
corresponding practice, a secure, sturdy, firm, im- 
pregnable Antinomian. He thinks that he will 
have heaven, because he has faith. But if his faith 

VOL. Vli:, o 



314 NATURE OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 

do not bring the virtues of heaven into his heart, 
it will never spread either the glory or the security 
of heaven around his person. The region to which 
he vainly thinks of looking forward, is a region of 
spirituality — and he himself must he spiritualized, 
ere it can prove to him a region of enjoyment. If 
he count on a different paradise from this, he is as 
widely mistaken as they who dream of the luxury 
that awaits them in the paradise of Mahomet. He 
misinterprets the whole undertaking of Jesus Christ. 
He degrades the salvation which he hath achieved, 
into a salvation from animal pain. He transforms 
the heaven which He has opened, into a heaven of 
animal gratifications. He forgets, that on the great 
errand of man's restoration, it is not more necessary 
to recall our departed species to the heaven from 
which they had wandered, than it is to recall to the 
bosom of man its departed worth, and its departed 
excellence. The one is what faith will do on the 
other side of death. But the other just as certainly 
faith must do on this side of death. It is here that 
heaven begins. It is here that eternal life is entered 
upon. It is here that man first breathes the air 
of immortality. It is upon earth that he learns the 
rudiments of a celestial character, and first tastes 
of celestial enjoyments. It is here, that the well 
of water is struck out in the heart of renovated 
man, and that fruit is made to grow unto holiness, 
and then, in the end, there is life everlasting. The 
man whose threadbare orthodoxy is made up of 
meagre and unfruitful positions, may think that he 
walks in clearness, while he is only walking in the 
cold light of speculation He walks in the feeble 



NATURE OF THE XIHODOM OF GOD. 31^ 

sparks of his own kindling. Were it fire from thfc 
sanctuary, it would impart to his unregenerated 
bosom, of the heat, and spirit, and love of the 
sanctuary. This is the sure result of the faith that 
is unfeigned — and all that a feigned faith can pos- 
sibly make out, will be a fictitious title-deed, which 
will not stand before the light of the great day of 
final examination. And thus will it be found, I 
fear, in many cases of marked and ostentatious 
professorship, how possible a thing it is to have an 
appearance of the kingdom of God in word, and 
tlie kingdom of God in letter, and tlie kingdom of 
God in controversy — while the kingdom of God is 
not in power. 

But once more — instead of laying a false security 
upon one article, it is possible to have a mind 
familiarized to all the articles — to admit the need 
of holiness, and to demonstrate the channel of 
influence by which it is brought down from heaven 
upon the hearts of believers — to cast an eye of 
intelligence over the whole symphony and extent of 
Christian doctrine — to lay bare those ligaments of 
connexion by which a true faith in the mind is ever 
sure to bring a new spirit and a new practice along 
with it — and to hold up the lights both of Scripture 
and of experience, over the whole process of man's 
regeneration. It is possible for one to do all this 
—and yet to have no part in that regeneration — 
to declare with ability and effect the Gospel to 
others, and yet himself be a castaway — to unravel 
the whole of that spiritual mechanism, by which a 
sinner is transformed into a saint, while he does not 
exemplify the working of that mechanism in his own 



316 NATURE OP THE KINGDOM OF GOD, 

person — to explain what must be done, and what 
must be undergone in the process of becoming one 
of the children of the kingdom, while he himself 
remains one of the children of this world. To him 
the kingdom of God hath come in word, and it 
hath come hi letter, and it hath come in natural 
discernment ; but it hath not come in power. He 
may have profoundly studied the whole doctrine of 
the kingdom — and have conceived the various ideas 
of which it is composed — and have embodied them 
in words — and have poured them forth in utter- 
ance — and yet be as little spiritualized by these 
manifold operations, as the air is spirituahzed by 
ils being the avenue for the sounds of his voice 
to the ears of his listening auditory. The living 
man may, with all the force of his active intelli- 
gence, be a mere vehicle of transmission. The 
Holy Giiost may leave the message to take its 
own way through his mind — and may refuse the 
accession of His influence, till it make its escape 
from the lips of the preacher— and may trust 
lor its conveyance to those aerial undulations by 
which the report is carried forward to an assembled 
multitude — and may only, after the entrance of 
hearing has been effected for the terms of the 
message, may only, after the unaided powers of 
moral and physical nature have brought the 
matter thus far, may then, and not till then, add 
His own influence to the truths of the message, 
and send them with this impregnation from the 
ear to the conscience of any whom He listeth. 
And thus from the workings of a cold and desolate 
bosom in the human expounder, may there pro 



NATURE OF THE K.INGDOM OF GOD. 31^ 

ceed a voice, which on its way to some of tV»ose 
who are assembled around him, shall turn out to 
ho a voice of urgency and power. He may be 
the 11 -• trument of blessings to others, which have 
ne^er come with kindly or effective influence upon 
his own heart. He may inspire an energy, which 
he does not feel, and pour a comfort into the 
wounded spirit, the taste of which, and the enjoy- 
ment of which is not permitted to his own — and 
nothing can serve more effectually than this expe- 
rimental fact to humble him, and to demonstrate 
the existence of a power which cannot be wielded 
by all the energies of Nature — a power often 
refused to eloquence, often refused to the might 
and the glory of human wisdom — often refused to 
the most strenuous exertions of human might and 
human talent, and generally met with in richest 
abundance among the ministrations of the men of 
simplicity and prayer. 

Some of you have heard of the individual who, 
under an oppression of the severest melancholy, 
implored relief and counsel from his physician. 
The unhappy patient was advised to attend the 
performances of a comedian, who had put all the 
world into ecstasies. But it turned out, that the 
patient was the comedian himself — and that while 
his smile was the signal of merriment to all, his 
heart stood uncheered and motionless, amid the 
gratulations of an applauding theatre — and evening 
after evening, did he kindle around him a rapture 
in which he could not participate — a poor, heljv- 
less, dejected mouiuer, among the tumults of 



318 NATURE OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 

that high-sounding gaiety, which he himself had 
created. 

Let all this touch our breasts with the persuasion, 
of the nothingness of man. Let it lead us to 
withdraw our confidence from the mere instrument, 
and to carry it upwards to Him who alone worketh 
all in all. Let it reconcile us to the arrangements 
of His providence, and assure our minds, that He 
can do with one arrangement, what we fondly 
anticipated from another. Let us cease to be 
violently affected by the mutabiUties of a fleeting 
and a shifting world — and let nothing be suffered 
to have the power of dissolving for an instant, that 
connection of trust wliich should ever subsist 
between our minds and the will of the all-working 
Deity. Above all, let us carefully separate between 
our liking for certain accompaniments of the word, 
and our liking for the word itself. Let us be 
jealous of those human preferences, which may 
bespeak some human and adventitious influence 
upon our hearts, and be altogether different from 
the influence of Christian truth upon Christianized 
and sanctified affections. Let us be tenacious 
only of one thing — not of holding by particular 
ministers — not of saying, that " I am of Paul, or 
Cephas, or ApoUos" — not of idolizing the servant, 
while the Master is forgotten, — but let us hold by 
the Head, even Christ. He is the source of alJ 
spiritual influence — and while the agents whom he 
em{)loys, can do no more than bring the kingdom 
of God to you in word — it lies with him either to 
exalt one agency, or to bumble and depress anothef 



KATURE OF THE KINGDOM OF G J>D. 519 

.—find either with or without such an agency, by 
the demonstration of that Spirit, which is giver 
jnto faith, to make the kingdooi of God come mt( 
your hearts with power 



820 heaven a characteb 

DISCOURSE VI. 

HEAVEN A CHARACTER AND NOT A LOCALITY. 



*' He that is unjust, let him be unjust still : and he which is filthy^ 
let him be filthy still : and he that is righteous, let him be 
righteous still/, and he that is holy, let him be holy still." 
— Rev. xxii. 11. 

Our first remark on this passage of Scripture, is, 
how very palpably and nearly it connects time 
with eternity. The character wherewith we 
sink into the grave at death, is the very character 
wherewith we shall re-appear on the day of resur- 
rection. The character which habit has fixed and 
strengthened ihrough life, adheres, it would seem, 
to the disembodied spirit, through the mysterious in- 
terval which separates the day of our dissolution from 
the day of our account — when it will again stand 
forth, the very image and substance of what it was, 
to the inspection of the Judge and the awards of the 
judgment-seat. The moral lineaments which be 
graven on the tablet of the inner man, and which 
every day of an unconverted life makes deeper 
and more indelible than before, will retain the very 
impress they have gotten — unaltered and uneffaced, 
by the transition from our presen'c to our future 
state of existence. There will be a dissolution, 
and then a reconstruction of the body, from the 
eepulLlnal dust into which it had mouiderftd. Bu? 



AND NOT A LOCALITY. 321 

there will be neither a dissolution nor a renovat'on 
of the spirit, which, indestructible both in character 
and essence, will weather and retain its identity, 
on the mid-way passage between this world and the 
next — so that at the time of quitting its earthly 
tenement we may say, that, if unjust now it will be 
unjust still, if filthy now it will be filthy still, if 
righteous now it will be righteous still, and if holy 
now it will be holy still. 

Our second remark, suggested by the scripture 
now under consideration, is that there be many 
analogies of nature and experience, which even 
death itself does not interrupt. There is nought 
more familiar to our daily observation than 
the power and inveteracy of habit — insomuch that 
any vicious propensity is strengthened by every 
new act of indulgence ; any virtuous principle is 
more firmly established than before, by every new 
act of resolute obedience to its dictates. The law 
which connects the actings of boyhood or of youth 
with the character of manhood, is the identical, the 
unrepealed law which connects our actings in time 
with our character through eternity. The way in 
which the moral discipline of youth prepares for the 
honours and the enjoyments of a virtuous manhood, 
is the very way in which the moral and spiritual 
discipline of a whole life prepares for a virtuous 
and happy immortality. And, on the other hand, 
the succession, as of cause and efi'ect, from a 
profligate youth or a dishonest manhood, to a dis- 
graced and worthless old age — is just the succession, 
also of cause and effect, between the misdeeds and 
the depravities of our history on earth, and an 
o2 



322 HEA.VEN A CHARACTER 

inheritance of worthlessness and wretchedness for 
ever. The law of moral continuity between th4 
difT'erent stages of human life, is also the law o« 
continuity between the two -vorlds — which even 
the death that intervenes does not violate. Be he 
a saint or a sinner, each shall be filled with the 
fruit of his own ways — so that when translated 
into their respective places of fixed and everlasting 
destination, the one shall rejoice through eternity 
in that pure element of goodness, which here he 
loved and aspired after ; the other, a helpless, a 
degraded victim of those passions which lorded 
over him through life, shall be irrevocably doomed 
to that worst of torments and that worst of tyranny 
— the torment of his own accursed nature, the 
inexorable tyranny of evil. 

Our third remark suggested by this scripture is, 
that it affords no very dubious perspective of the • 
future heaven and the future hell of the New 
Testament. We are aware of the material images 
employed in scripture, and by which it bodies forth 
its representation of both — of the fire, and the 
brimstone, and the lake of living agony, and the 
gnashing of teeth, and the wailings, the ceaseless 
wailings of distress and despair unutterable, by 
which the one is set before us in characters of terror 
t^nd most revolting hideousness — of the splendour, 
the spaciousness, the music, the floods of melody 
and sights of surpassing loveliness, by which the 
other is set before us in characters of bliss and 
brightness unperishable ; with all that can regale 
the glorified senses of creatures, rejoicing for ever in 
tne presence and before the throne of God. W« 



AND NOT A LOCyUJTY. 32?- 

■top not to inquire, and far less to dispute, whether 
these descriptions, in the plain meaning and very 
letter of them, are to be realized. But we hold 
that it would purge theology from many of ita 
errors, and that it would guide and enlighten the 
practical Christianity of many honest inquirers — ^if 
the moral ciiaracter both of heaven and hell were 
more distinctly recognized, and held a more pro- 
minent place in the regards and contemplations of 
men. It' it indeed be true that the moral, rather 
than the material, is the main ingredient, whether 
of the coming torment or the coming ecstasy — then 
the hell of the wicked may be said to have already 
begun, and the heaven of the virtuous may be said 
to have already begun. The one, in the bitterness 
of an unhinged and dissatisfied spirit, has a foretaste 
of the wretchedness before him ; the other, in 
the peace and triumphant complacency of an 
approving conscience, has a foretaste of the happi- 
ness before him. Each is ripening for his own ever- 
lasting destiny ; and whether in the depravities that 
deepen and accumulate on the character of the one, 
or in the graces that brighten and multiply upon the 
other— we see materials enough, either for the 
worm that dioth not, or for the pleasures that are 
for evermore. 

But again, it may be asked, will spiritual 
elements alone suffice to make up, either the 
intense and intolerable wretchedness of a hell, or 
the intense beatitude of a heaven? For an answer 
to this question, let us. first turn your attention to 
the former of these receptacles. And we ask you 
to think of the state of that heart in respect to 



324 HEAVEN A CHARACTEU 

sensation, which is the seat of a concentrated 
and all-absorbing selfishness, which feels for no 
other interest than its own, and holds no fellowship 
of truth or honesty or confidence with the fellow- 
beings around it. The owner of such a heart may 
live in society ; but, cut off as he is by his own 
sordid nature from the reciprocities of honourable 
feeling and good faith, he may be said to live an 
exile in the midst of it. He is a stranger to the 
day-light of the moral world ; and, instead of 
walking abroad on an open platform of free and 
fearless communion with his fellows, he spends a 
cold and heartless existence in the hiding-place of 
his own thoughts. You mistake it, if you think 
of this creeping and ignoble creature, that he knows 
aught of the real truth or substance of enjoyment ; 
or however successful he may have been in the 
wiles of his paltry selfishness, that a sincere or a 
solid satisfaction has been the result oi it. On the 
contrary, if you enter his heart, you will there find 
a distaste and disquietude in the lurking sense of 
its own worthlessness ; and that dissevered from 
the respect of society without, it finds no refuge 
within where he is abandoned by the respect of his 
own conscience. It does not consist with moral 
nature, that there should be internal happiness or 
internal harmony, when the moral sense is made to 
suffer perpetual violence. A man of cunning 
and concealment, however dexterous, however 
triumphant in his worthless policy, is not at ease. 
The stoop, the downcast regards, the dark and 
sinister expression, of him who cannot lift up his 
head among his fellow men, or look his companiona 



AND NOT A LOCALITY, 321) 

in the face, are the sensible proofs, that he who 
knows himself to be dishonest feels himself to be 
degraded ; and the inward sense of dishonour which 
haunts and humbles him here, is but the commence- 
ment of that shame and everlasting contempt to 
which he shall awaken hereafter. This, you will 
observe, is a purely moral chastisement ; and, apart 
altogether from the infliction of violence or pain on 
the sentient economy, is enough to overwhelm the 
spirit that is exercised thereby. Let him then that 
is unjust now be unjust still ; and, in stepping from 
time to eternity, he bears, in his own distempered 
bosom, the materials of his coming vengeance along 
with him. The character itself will be the execu- 
tioner of its own condemnation ; and when, instead 
of each suffering apart, the unrighteous are con- 
gregated together — as in the parable of the tares, 
where, instead of each plant being severally 
destroyed, the order is given to bind them up in 
bundles and burn them— we may be well aspurpd, 
that, where the turbulence and disorder of an 
unrighteous society are superadded to those 
sufferings which prey ir. secrecy and solitude 
within the heart of each individual member, a 
ten-fold fiercer and more intolerable agony will 
ensue from it. The anarchy of a state, when fbu 
authority of its government is for a time suspended, 
forms but a feeble representation of that everlasting 
anarchy, when the unrighteous of all ages are !e? 
loose to act and react with unmitigated violence ca 
each other. la this conflict of assembled myriads i 
this fierce and fell collision between the outrages oi 
injustice on the one side, and the outcries oi 



326 HEAVKN A CHARACTER 

resentment on the other ; and, though no pain 
were inflicted, in this war of passions and of pur- 
poses, the passion and purpose of violence in one 
quarter calling forth the passion and the purpose 
of keenest vengeance back again — though no 
material or sentient agony were felt — though a war 
of disembodied spirits — yet in the wild tempest ol 
emotions alone^:-the hatred, the fury, the burning 
recollection of injured rights, and the brooding 
thoughts of yet unfulfilled retaliation — in these, 
and these alone, do we behold the materials enough 
of a dire and dreadful pandemonium ; and, apart 
from corporeal suffering altogether, may we behold, 
in the full and final developments of character 
alone, enough for imparting all its corrosion to the 
worm that dieth not, enough for sustaining in all 
its fierceness the fire that is not quenched. 

But there is another moral ingredient in the 
future sufferings of the wicked, beside the one of 
which we have now spoken — suggested to us by 
the second clause of our text ; and from which we 
learn that, not only will the unjust man carry his 
falsehoods and his frauds along with him to the 
place of condemnation, but that also the voluptuary 
will carry his unsanctified habits and unhallowed 
passions thitherward. " Let him that is filthy be 
filthy still." We would here take the opportunity 
of exposing, what we fear is a frequent delusion in 
society — who give their respect to the man of 
Honour and integrity — and he does not forfeit that 
respect, though known at the same time to be a 
man of dissipation. Not that ice think any one of 
the virtues, which enter into the composition of a 



ANi> NOT A LOCALITY. 327 

perfect character, can siiiFer, without all the other 
virtues suffering along with it. We believe that a 
conjunction, between a habit of unlawful pleasure 
and the maintenance of a strict resolute exalted 
equity and truth, is very seldom, we could almost 
say, is never realised. The man of forbidden in- 
dulgence, in the prosecution of his objects, has a 
thousand degrading fears to encounter ; and many 
concealments to practise; perhaps low and un- 
worthy artifices to which he must descend ; and 
how can either his honour or his humanity be said 
to survive, if at length, in his heedless and impetu- 
ous career, he shall trample on the dearest rights 
ind the most sacred interests of families ? With 
tts it has all the authority of a moral aphorism, 
that the sobrieties of human virtue can never be 
invaded, witliout the equities of human virtue also 
being invaded. The moralities of human life are 
too closely linked and interwoven with each other, 
as that though one should be detached, the others 
might be left uninjured and entire ; and so no one 
can cast his purity away from him, without a vio- 
lence being done to the general moral structure 
and consistency of his whole character. But, be 
this as it may ; we have the authority of the text 
and the oft reiterated affirmations of the New 
Testament, for saying of the voluptuary, that, il 
the countenance of the world be not withdrawti 
Crom him, the gate of heaven is at least shut against 
him ; that nothing unclean or unholy can enter 
there ; and that, carryi' ' hh. uncrucified affec- 
tions into the place of conden> ration, he will find 
tnem too to De the mmistert oi wrath, the exe'i-utioner 



*2S HEAVEN A CHARACTER 

of a still sorer vengeance. The loathing, the re^ 
morse, the felt and conscious degradation, the 
dreariness of heart that follow in the train of guilty 
indulgence here — these form but the beginning of 
his sorrows ; and are but the presages and the pre- 
cursors of that deeper wretchedness, which, by the 
unrepealed laws of moral nature, the same character 
will entail on its possessors in another state of 
existence. They are but the penalties of vice in 
embryo, and they may give at least the conception 
of what are these penalties in full. It will add — it 
will add inconceivably, to the darkness and disorder 
of that moral chaos, in which the impenitent shall 
spend their eternity — when the uproar of the bac- 
chanalian and the licentious emotions is thus super- 
added, to the selfish and malignant passions of our 
nature ; and when the frenzy of unsated desire, 
followed up by the languor and the compunction of 
its worthless indulgence, shall make up the sad 
history of many an unhappy spirit. We need not 
to dwell on the picture, though it brings out into 
bolder relief the all-important truth, that there is 
an inherent bitterness in sin ; that, by the very 
constitution of our nature, moral evil is its own 
curse and its own worst punishment ; that the 
wicked on the other side of death, but reap what 
they sow on this side of it; and that, whether we 
look to the tortures of a distempered spirit or to 
the countless ills of a distempered society, we may 
be very sure that to the character of its inmates — a 
character which they have fostered upon earth, and 
which now remains fixed on them through eternity 
— the main wretchedness of hell is owing. 



AND NOT A LOGALlTf. 529 

Befoie quitting this part of the subject, wc have 
but one remark more to offer. It may be felt as 
if we had overstated the power of mere character 
to beget a wretchedness at all approaching to the 
wretchedness of hell — seeing that the character ia 
often realised in this world, without bringing along 
with it a distress or a discomfort which is at all 
intolerable. Neither the unjust man of our text, 
nor the hcentious man of our text, is seen to be so 
unhappy here, in virtue of the moral characteristics 
which respectively belong to them, as to justify the 
imagination, that there, these characteristics will 
be of power, to effectuate such anguish and dis- 
order of spirit as we have now been representing. 
But it is forgotten, first, that the world presents 
in its business, its amusements, and its various 
gratifications, a refuge from the mental agonies of 
reflection and remorse — and, secondly, that the 
governments of the world offer a restraint against 
the outbreakings of violence, which would keep up 
a perpetual anarchy in the species. Let us simply 
conceive of these two securities against our having 
even now a hell upon earth, that they are both 
taken down ; that there is no longer such a world 
as ours, affording to each individual spirit innu- 
merable diversions from the burden of its own 
thoughts ; and no longer such a human govern- 
ment as ours, affording to general society a power- 
ful defence against the countless variety of ills, that 
would otherwise rage and tumultuate within its 
borders — then, as sure as that a solitary prison is 
felt by every criminal to be the most dreadful of all 
punishments ; and as sure as that, on the authority 



330 HEAVEN A CHARACTBB 

of law being suspended, the reign of terror would 
commence, and the unchained passions of humanity 
would go forth over the face of the land to raven 
and to destroy — so surely, out of moral elements and 
influences alone, might an eternity of utter wretched- 
ness and despair be entailed on the rebellious : 
And, only let all the unjust and all the licentious 
of our text be formed into a community by them- 
selves, and the Christianity which now acts as a 
purifying and preserving salt upon the earth be 
wholly removed from them ; and then it will be 
seen that the picture has not been overcharged; 
but that the wretchedness is intense and universal, 
just because the wickedness reigns uncontrolled, 
without mixture and without mitigation. 

But we now exchange this appalling for a delight- 
ful contemplation. The next clause of our text 
suggests to us the moral character of heaven. We 
learn from it that, on the universal principle "as a 
tree falleth so it lies," the righteous now will be 
righteous still. We no more dispute the material 
accompaniments of heaven, than we dispute the 
material accompaniments in the place of condem- 
nation. But still we must affirm of the happiness 
that reigns, and holds unceasing jubilee there — that, 
mainly and pre-eminently, it is the happiness of 
virtue ; that the joy of the eternal state is not so 
much a sensible or a tasteful or even an intellectual 
as it is a moral and spiritual joy ; that it is a thing 
of mental, infinitely more than it is a thing of cor- 
poreal gratification ; and, to convince us how much 
the former has the power and predominance over 
the latter, we bid you reflect, that, even in this 



AND NOT A LOCALITY. 331 

world, with all the defect and disorder of its ma- 
terialism, the curse upon its ground inflicting the 
necessity of sore labour, and the angry tempest 
from its sky after destroying or sweeping off the 
fruits of it, the infirmity of their feeble and dis- 
tempered frames, after the pining sickness and at 
times the sore agony — yet, in spite of these, we 
ask whether it would not hold nearly if not uni- 
versally true, that if all men were righteous then 
all men would be happy. Just imagine for a mo- 
ment, that honour and integrity and benevolence 
were perfect and universal in the world ; that each 
held the property and right and reputation of his 
neighbour to be dear to him as his own ; that the 
suspicions and the jealousies and the heart-burnings, 
w^hether of hostile violence or envious competition, 
were altogether banished from human society; 
that the emotions, at all times delightful, of good- 
will on the one side, were ever and anon calling 
the emotions no less delightful of gratitude back 
again ; that truth and tenderness hold their secure 
abode in every family; and, on stepping forth 
among the wider companionships of life, that each 
could confidently rejoice in every one he met with 
as a brother and a friend — we ask if on this simple 
change, a change you will observe in the morale 
of humanity, though winter should repeat its storms 
as heretofore, and every element of nature were to 
abide unaltered — yet, in virtue of a process and a 
revolution altogether mental, would not our mil- 
lennium have begun, and a heaven on earth be 
realized ? Now let this- contemplation be borne 
aloft, as it were, to the upper sanctuary, where we 



332 HEAVEN A CHARACTER 

are told there are the spirits of just n..fen inj^iit v'-.'' 
feet, or where those who were once the rightoO!j.j 
on earth are righteous still. Let it be remenr;'- tred, 
that nothirug is admitted there, which w-i'ietl 
wickedness or maketh a lie; and that tr:Hrei<>ro,, 
with every feculence of evil detached and dissfcvereu 
from the mass, there is nought in heaven but the 
pure the transparent element of goodness — its un- 
bounded love, its tried and unalterable faithfulness, 
its confiding sincerity. Think of the expressive 
designation given to it in the Bible, the 'an.^ qt 
uprightness. Above all think, that;, vf-c po in 
visible glory, the righteous God, '■'he ..oveth 
righteousness, there sitteth upon His tr.i'ne, in 
the midst of a rejoicing family — Himself rejoicing 
over them, because, formed in His own likeness, 
they love what He loves, they rejoice in what He 
rejoices. There may be palms of triumph ; there 
may be crowns of unfading lustre ; there may be 
pavements of emerald, and rivers of pleasure, and 
groves of surpassing loveliness, and palaces ol 
delight, and high arches in heaven which ring with 
sweetest melody — but, mainly and essentially, it is 
a moral glory which is lighted up there ; it is vir- 
tue which blooms and is immortal there : it is the 
goodness by which the spirits of the holy are re- 
gulated here, it is this which forms the beatitude 
of eternity. The righteous now, who, when they 
die and rise again, shall be righteous still, have 
heaven already in their bosoms ; and when they 
enter within its portals, they carry the very being 
and substance of its blessedness along with them — . 
the character which is itself the whole of heaven's 



AND NOT A LOCALITY. 333 

worth, the character which is the very essence of 
heaven's enjoyments. 

*' Let him that is holy, be holy still." The two 
clauses descriptive of the character in the place of 
celestial blessedness, are counterparts to the clauses 
descriptive of the character in the place of infernal 
woe. He that is righteous in the one stands con- 
trasted with him that is unjust in the other. He 
that Is holy in the one stands contrasted with him 
that is licentious in the other. But we would have 
you attend to the full extent and significance of 
the term " holy." It is not abstinence from the 
outward deeds of profligacy alone. It is not a mere 
recoil from impurity in action. It is a recoil from 
impurity in thought. It is that quick and sensitive 
delicacy to which even the very conception of evil 
is offensive — a virtue which has its residence within; 
which takes guardianship of the heart, as of a 
citadel or unviolated sanctuary in which no wrong 
or worthless imagination is permitted to dwell. It 
is not purity of action that is all which we contend 
for. It is exalted purity of sentiment — the ethereal 
purity of the third heavens, which, if once settled 
in the heart, brings the peace and the triunjph and 
the unutterable perenity of heaven along with it 
In the maintenance of this, there is a curious ele- 
vation ; there is the complacency, we had almost 
said the pride, of a great moral victory over the 
infirmities of an earthly and accursed nature ; there 
is a health and harmony to the soul ; a beauty ot 
holiness, which, though it efiicresces on the coun- 
tenance and the manner and the outward path, is 
itself so thoroughly internal, as to make purity of 



334 HEAVEN A CHAKACTER 

heaiL the most distinctive evidence of a work of 
grace in time, the most distinct and decisive evi- 
denes of a character that is ripening and expanding 
for ti e glories of eternity. " Blessed are the pure 
in heart, for they shall see God." " Without 
hohness no man shall see God." " Into the holy 
city nothing which defileth or worketh an abomi- 
nation shall enter." These are distinct and de- 
cisive passages, and point to that consecrated way, 
through which alone, the gate of heaven can be 
opened to us. On this subject, there is a remark- 
able harmony, between the didactic sayings of 
various books in the New Testament, and the de- 
scriptive scenes which are laid before us in the 
book of Revelations. However partial and im- 
perfect the glimpses there afforded of heaven may 
be, one thing is palpable as day, that holiness is 
its very atmosphere. It is the only element which 
its inmates breathe, and which it is their supreme 
and ineffable delight to breathe in. They luxuriate 
therein, as in their best-loved and most congenial 
element. Holiness is their oil of gladness — the 
elixir, if we may use the expression, the moral 
elixir of glorified spirits. And in their joyful 
hosannas, whether of " Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord 
God Almighty," or of "Just and true are thy ways 
thou King of Saints," we may read, that, as virtue 
in the Godhead is the theme of their adoration, 
80 virtue in themselves is the very treasure they 
have laid up in heaven — the wealth, as well as the 
ornament, of their now celestial natures. 

We would once more advert to a prevalent de- 
lueion that obtains in society. We arc aware of 



AND NOT A LOCALITY. 3? 5 

nothing more ruinous, than the acquiescence of 
whole multitudes in a low standard of qualifications 
for Heaven. The distinct aim is to be righteoua 
now, that, after the death and the resun-ection, 
you may be righteous still — to be holy no v, that 
you maybe holy still. But hold it not e:>«iugb, 
that you are free from the dishonesties which vould 
forfeit the mere respect and confidence of the 
world, or from the profl.igacies which even the 
world itself would hold to be disgraceful. There 
is a certain amount of morality, v.'hich is in demand 
upon earth, but which is miserably short of the 
requisite preparation for Heaven — the holiness in- 
dispensable there, is a universal an "unspotted and 
withal a mental and spiritual holiness. It is this 
which distinguishes the morality of a regenerated 
and aspiring saint, from the morality of a respect- 
able citizen, who still is but a citizen of the world, 
with his conversation not in heaven, with neither 
his heart nor his treasure there. The righteous 
of our text would recoil from the least act of un- 
faithfulness, from being unfaithful in the least as 
from being unfaithful in much. The holy of our 
text would shrink in sensitive aversion and alarm 
from the first approaches of evil, from the incipient 
contaminations of thought and fancy and feeling, 
as from the foul and final contaminations of the 
outward history. Both are diligent to be found of 
Christ without spot and blameless, in the great day 
of account — glorifying the Lord with their soul and 
spirit, as well as with their bodies — aspiring after 
those graces, which, unseen by every earthly eye, 
\)elong to the hidden man of the heart, and in the 



S36 HEAVEN A CHARACTEK 

sight of heaven are of great price— and so proceed«^ 
ing onward from strength to strength on this lofty 
path of obedience, till they appear perfect before 
God in Zion. 

We feel that we have not nearly exhausted 
the subject of our text, by these brief and almost 
miscellaneous observations. The truth is, it is 
a great deal too unwieldy for any single address, 
and we shall therefore conclude with the notice 
of one specimen, that might be alleged for the 
importance of the view that we have just given, 
in purging theology from error. If the moral 
character then of these future states of existence, 
were distinctly understood and consistently ap- 
plied, it would serve directly and decisively to ex- 
tinguish antinomianism. It would in fact reduce 
that heresy to a contradiction in terms. There is 
no sound and scriptural Christian, who ever thinks 
of virtue as the price of heaven. It is something 
a great deal higher, it is heaven itself — the very. 
essence, as we have already said, of heaven's 
blessedness. It occupies therefore a much higher 
place than the secondary and the subordinate one, 
ascribed to it even by many of the writers termed 
evangelical — who view it mainly as a token or an 
evidence that heaven will be ours. Instead of 
which it is the very substance of heaven — a sample 
on hand of the identical good, which, in larger 
measure and purer quality, is afterwards awaiting 
us — an entrance on the path which leads to heaven ; 
or rather an actual lodgement of ourselves within 
that line of demarcation, which separates the hea- 
ren of the New Testament from the hell of the 



AND NOT A LOCALITY. 337 

New Testament. For heaven is not so much a 
l(ieality as a character ; and we, by a moral transi- 
tion from the old to the new character, have in fact 
crossed the threshold, and are now rejoicing within 
the confines of God's spiritual family. By the 
doctrine of justification through faith, we under- 
stand that Christ purchased our right of admittance 
into heaven — or opened its door for us. Is there 
aught antinomian in this ? The obstacle, the 
legal obstacle, between us and a life of prosperous 
and never-ending virtue, is now broken down; and 
is it upon that event, that we are to relinquish the 
path which has just been opened to welcome and 
invite our advancing footsteps ? The doctrine of 
justification by faith is not an obstacle to virtue — 
it is but an introduction to it. It is in truth the 
removal of an obstacle — the unfastening of that 
drag which before held us in apathy and despair ; 
and restrained us from breaking forth on that 
career of obedience, in which, with the hope of 
glory before us, we purify ourselves even as Christ 
is pure. The purpose cf His death was not to 
supersede, but to stimulate our obedience. " He 
gave himself for us to redeem us from all iniquity 
and purify to himself a peculiar people zealous of 
good works." The object of His promises is not 
to lull our indolence, but rouse us to activitj-^. 
*' Having received these promises therefore, dearly 
beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness 
of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the 
fear of God." 

We expatiate no further; but shall be happy, 
f, as the fruit of these imperfect observations, you 

VOL. VII. p 



338 HBAVBN A CHARACTER, &e. 

can De made to recognise how distinctly practical 
a business the work of Christianity is. It is simply 
to destroy one character, and to build up another 
in its room ; to resist the temptations which vitiate 
and debase, and make all the graces and moralities 
which enter into the composition of perfect virtue 
the objects of our most strenuous cultivation. In 
the expediting of this mighty transformation, on 
the completion of which there hinges our eternity, 
we have need of believing prayer ; a thorough re- 
nunciation of all dependence on our own strength; 
a thorough reliance on the proffered strength and 
aid of the upper sanctuary ; a deep sense of our 
infirmities, and constant application for that Spirit 
who has promised to help them — that, in the 
language of the Apostle we may strive mightily, 
according to the grace which worketb in us 
m^btUy. 



THE REASONABLENESS OF FAITH. 339 

DISCOURSE VIL 

ON THE REASONABLENESS OF FAITH. 



• But bpfc-e faith c&me, Wi -vere kept under the law, ihut op 
Tinto the '"aith which should afterwards be rerealed." — GA.LA- 
TiANs iii. 23. 

** Shut up unto the faith." This is the expression 
which we fix upon as the suhject of our present 
discourse — and to let you more effectually into the 
meaning of it, it may be right to state, that in 
the preceding clause " kept under the law," the 
term kept, is, in the original Greek, derived from 
a word which signifies a sentinel. The mode of 
conception is altogether military. The law is made 
to act the part of a sentry, guarding every avenue 
but one — and that one leads those who are compelled 
to take it to the faith of the Gospel. They are 
shut up to this faith as their only alternative — like 
an enemy driven by the superior tactics of an op- 
posing general, to take up the only position in which 
they can maintain themselves, or fly to the only 
town in which they can find a refuge or a security. 
This seems to have been a favourite style of argu- 
ment with Paul, and the way in which he often 
carried on an intellectual warfare with the enemies 
of his Master's cause. It forms the basis of that 
masterly and decisive train of reasoning, which we 
have in his epistle to the Romans. By the opera* 



340 THE REASONABLENESS OF FAITH. 

tion of a skilful tactics, he, (if we may be allowed 
the expression) manceuvered them, and shut them 
up to the faith of the gospel. It gave prodigious 
effect to his argument, when he reasoned with them, 
as he often does, upon their own principles, and 
turned them into instruments of conviction against 
themselves. With the Jews he reasoned as a Jew, 
He made a full concession to them of the leading 
principles of Judaism — and this gave him possession 
of the vantage ground upon which these principles 
stood. He made use of the Jewish law as a sen- 
tinel to shut them out of every other refuge, and 
to shut them up to the refuge ^aid before them in 
the Gospel. He led them to Christ by a school- 
master which they could not refuse — and the lesson 
of this schoolmaster, though a very decisive, was 
a very short one. " Cursed be he that continueth 
not in all the words of this law to do them." But, 
in point of fact, they had not done them. To them 
then belonged the curse of the violated law. The 
awful severity of its sanctions was upon them. 
They found the faith and the free offer of the Gospel 
to be the only avenue open to receive them. They 
were shut up unto this avenue ; and the law, by 
concluding them all to be under sin, left them no 
other outlet but the free act of grace and of mercy 
laid before us in the New Testament. 

But this is not the only example of that peculiar 
way in which St. Paul has managed his discussions 
with the enemies of the faith. He carried the 
principle of being all things to all men into his very 
reasonings. He had Gentiles as well as Jews to 
contend with — and he often made some sentiment 



THE REASONABLENESS OF FAITH. 341 

or comictlon of their own, the starting point of his 
argument. In this same epistle to the Romans, 
he pleaded with the Gentiles the acknowledged law 
of nature and of conscience. In his speech to the 
men of Athens, he dated his argument from a point 
in their own superstition. In this way he drew 
converts both from the ranks of Judaism, and the 
ranks of idolatry — and whether it was the school 
of Gamaliel in Jerusalem, or the school of poetry 
and philosophy in countries of refinement, that he 
had to contend with, his accomplished mind was 
never at a loss for principles by which he bore do wn 
the hostility of his adversaries, and shut them up 
unto the faith. 

But there is a fashion in philosophy as well as m 
other things. In the coiu'se of centuries, new 
schools are formed ; and the old, with all their doc- 
trines, and all their plausibilities, sink into oblivion. 
The restless appetite of the human mind for specu- 
lation, must have novelties to feed upon — and after 
the countless fluctuations of two thousand years, 
the age in which we live has its own taste, and its 
own style of sentiment to characterize it. If Paul, 
vested with a new apostolical commission, were to 
make his appearance amongst us, we should like to 
know how he would shape his argument to the reign- 
ing taste and philosophy of the times. We should 
like to confront him with the literati of the day, 
and hear him lift his intrepid voice in our halls and 
colleges. In his speech to the men of Athens, he 
refers to certain of their own poets. We should like 
to hear his references to the poetry and the publi- 
cations of modern Europe — and while the science 



342 THE REASONABLENESS OF PAITH. 

of this cultivated age f;tood to listen in all the }>ride 
of academic dignity, we should like to know the 
arguments of him who was determined to kr.ow 
nothing save Jesus Christ, and Him crucified. 

But all this is little better than the indulgence 
of a dream. St. Paul has already fought the good 
fight, and his course is finished. The battles of 
the faith are now in other hands — and though the 
wisdom, and the eloquence, and the inspiration of 
Paul have departed from among us, yet he has left 
behind him the record of his principles. With this 
for our guide, we may attempt to do what he him- 
self calls upon us to do. We may attempt to be 
followers of him. We may imitate him in the in- 
trepid avowal of his principles — and we may try, 
however humbly and imperfectly, to imitate his style 
of defending them. We may accommodate our 
argument to the reigningprinciplesof the day. We 
may be all things to all men — and out of the leading 
varieties of taste and of sentiment which obtain in 
the present age, and in the present country, we 
may try if we can collect something, which may be 
turned into an instrument of conviction for reclaim- 
ing men from their delusions, and shutting them up 
unto the faith. 

There is first, then, the school of Natural Reli- 
gion — a school founded on the competency of the 
human mind to know God by the exercise of its 
own faculties — to clothe Ilim in the attributes of its 
own demonstration — to serve Hini by a worship 
and a law of its own discovery — and to assign to 
Plim a mode of procedure in the administration of 
this vast universe, upon the strength and the plausi- 



THE REASONABLENESS OF FAITH. 343 

bility of its own theories. We have not time at 
present for exposing the rash and unphilosophical 
audacity of all these presumptions. We lay hold 
of one of them ; and we maintain, that if steadily 
adhered to, and consistently carried into its con- 
sequences, it would empty the school of natural 
religion of all its disciples — it would shut them up 
unto the faith, and impress one rapid and universal 
movement into the school of Christ. The princi- 
ple which we allude to makes a capital figure in 
their self-formed speculations; and it is neither 
more nor less than the judicial government of God 
over moi-al and accountable creatures. They hold 
that there is a law. They hold the human race to 
be bound to obedience. They hold the authority of 
the law to be supported by sanctions; and that the 
truth, and justice, and dignity of the supreme Being 
are involved in these sanctions being enforced and 
executed. One step more, and they are fairly shut 
up unto the faith. That law which they hold to be 
in full authority and operation over us, has been 
most unquestionably violated. We appeal, as Paul 
did before us, to the actual state of the human heart, 
and of human performances. We ask them to open 
their eyes tu the world around them — to respect, 
like true philosophers, the evidence of observation, 
and not to flinch from the decisive undeniable fact 
which this evidence lays before them. Men are 
under the law, and that law they have violated. 
** There is not a just man on earth, that sinneth 
not." It is not to open shameless and abandoned 
profligacy, that we are pohiting your attention. 
We make our confident appeal to the purest and 



344 THE REASONABLENESS OF FAITH. 

loveliest of the species. We rest our cause with 
the most virtuous individual of our nature. We 
enter his heart, and from what passes there, we can 
gather enough, and more than enough, to overthrow 
this tottering and unsupported fabric. We take a 
survey of its desires, its wishes, its affections — 
and we put the question to the consciousness of its 
possessor, if all these move in obedient harmony 
even to the law of natural religion. The external 
conduct viewed separately and in itself, is, in the 
eye of every enlightened moralist, nothing. It is 
mere visible display. Virtue consists in the motive 
which lies behind it; and the soul is the place of 
its essential residence. Bring the soul then into 
immediate comparison with the law of God. Think 
of the pure and spiritual service which it exacts 
from you. Amid all the busy and complicated 
movements of the inner man, is there no estrange- 
ment from God ? Are there no tumultuous wan- 
dermgs from that purity, and goodness, and truth, 
which even philosophers ascribe to Him? Is there 
the holiness of His law, and 
His eternity ? Is there no 
slavish devotion to the paltry things of sense and 
of the world ? Is there no dreary interval of hours 
together, when God is unfelt and unthought of? 
Is there no one time when the mind delivers itself 
up to the guidance of its own feelings, and its own 
vanities — when it moves at a distance from heaven 
— and, whether in solitude or among acquaintances, 
carries along, without any reference to that Being 
whose arm is perpetually upon me ; who, at this 
moment, is at 'ny right hand, and measures out to 



THE REASONABLENESS OF FAITH. 345 

me every hairbreadth of my existence — who upholds 
jne through every point of that time which runs from 
the first cry of my infancy, to that dark hour when 
the weight of my dying agonies is upon me — whose 
love and whose kindness are ever present, to give 
me every breath which I draw, and every comfort 
which I enjoy ? We grant the disciples of natural 
religion the truth of their own principle, that we 
are under the moral government of the Almighty 
—and by the simple addition of one undeniable 
fact to their speculation, we shut them up unto the 
faith. The simple fact is, that we are rebels to 
that government; and the punishment of these rebel? 
is due to the vindication of its insulted authority 
To say, that God will perpetually interpose wifj 
an act of oblivion, would be vastly convenient for 
us — but what then becomes of that moral govern- 
ment which figures away in the demonstrations cf 
moralists ? Does it turn out after all, to be no- 
thing more than an idle and unmeaning declamation, 
on which they love to expatiate — without any thing 
like real attention or belief on the part of the 
thinking principle ? If they are not true to their 
own professed convictions, we can undertake to 
shut them up to nothing. This is slipping from 
under us — but it is by an actual desertion of their 
own principle. If you cannot get them to stand 
to the argument, the argument is discharged upon 
them in vain. If this be the result, we do not 
promise ourselves that all we can say shall have 
any weight upon their convictions — not, however, 
oecause they have gained a victory, but because 
they have betaken themselves to flight. At the 
p2 



346 THE REASONABLENEftS OF FAITH. 

very moment that we thought of shutting them up, 
and bhiding them in captivity to the obedience of 
the truth, they have turned about and got away 
from us — but how ? By an open renunciation of 
their own principle. Look at the great majority 
of infidel and demi-infidel authors, and they concur 
in representing man as an accountable subject, and 
God as a judge and a lawgiver. Examine then 
the account which this subject has to render — and 
you will see, in characters too glaring to be resisted, 
that with the purest and most perfect individual 
amongst us, it is a wretched account of guilt and 
deficiency. What make you of this ? Is the 
subject to rebel and disobey every hour, and the 
King, by a perpetual act of indulgence, to efface 
every character of truth and dignity from His 
government? Do this, and you depose the legis- 
lator from His throne. You reduce the sanctions 
of His law to a name and a mockery. You give 
the lie to your own speculation. You pull the 
fabric of His moral government to pieces- -and you 
give a spectacle to angels which makes them weep 
compassion on your vanity — poor, pigmy, perishable 
man, prescribing a way to the Eternal, and bring- 
ing down the high economy of Heaven to the 
standard of his convenience, and his wishes. This 
will never do. If there be any truth in the law 
of God over the creatures whom He has formed, 
and if that law we have trampled upon, we are 
amenable to its sentence. Ours is the dark and 
unsheltered state of condemnation — and if there be 
a single outlet or way of escaping, it cannot be 
auch a way as will abolish the law, and degrade 



THE REASONABLENESS OF FAITH. 347 

the Lawgiver — but it must be such a way as 
will vindicate and exalt the Deity — as will 
pour a tide of splendour over the majesty of 
His high attributes — and as in the sublime lan- 
guage of the prophet, who saw it from afar, will 
magnify His law, and make it honourable. To 
this way we are fairly shut up. It is our only 
alternative. It is offered to us in the Gospel ot 
t)ie New Testament. I am the way, says the 
Author of that Gospel, and by me, if any man 
enter in, he shall be saved. In the appointment 
of this Mediator — in His death, to make propitia- 
tion for the sins of the world — in His triumph over 
the powers of darkness — in the voice heard from 
the clouds of heaven, and issuing from the mouth 
of God himse-lf, " This is my beloved Son, in 
whom I am well pleased" — in the resistless argu- 
ment of the Apostle, who declares God to be just, 
and the justifier of him that believeth in Jesus — 
in the undoubted miracles which accompanied the 
preaching of this illustrious personage, and His 
immediate followers — in the noble train of prophecy, 
of which He was the object and the termination 
— in the choir of angels from heaven, who sung 
His entrance into the world — and in the sublime 
ascension from the grave, which carried him away 
from it — in all this we see a warrant and a security 
given to the work of our redemption in the New 
Testament, before which philosophy and all her 
speculations vanish into nothing. Let us betake 
ourselves to this way. Let us rejoice in being 
shut up unto it. It is passing, in fact, from death 
unto life — or, from our being under the law, which 



348 THE REASONABLENESS OF V M ^ 

speaks tribulation and wrath to every soul of m.m 
that doeth evil, to being under the grace which 
speaks quietness and assurance for ever to all that 
repair to it. The scripture hath concluded all to 
be under sin, that the promise by faith of Jesus 
Christ might be given to them that believe. 

We now pass on from the school of natural reli- 
gion to another school, possessing distinct features 

and of which we conceive the most expressive 

designation to be, the school of Classical Morality. 
The lessons of this school are given to the public 
in the form of periodical essays, elaborate disser- 
tations on the principles of virtue, eloquent and 
often highly interesting pictures of its loveliness and 
dignity, the charm that it imparts to domestic 
retirement, and its liappy subservience to the peace, 
and order, and well-being of society. It differs 
from the former school in one leading particular. 
It does not carry in its speculations so distinct and 
positive a reference to the Supreme Being. It is 
true, that our duties to Him are found to occupy 
a place in the catalogue of its virtues ; but then the 
principle on which they are made to rest, is not the 
•will of God, or obedien-ce to His law. They are 
rather viewed as a species of moral accomplishment 
— the effect of which is to exalt and embellish the 
individual. They form a component part of what 
they call virtue — but if virtue be looked upon in 
no other light than as the dress of the mind, we 
maintain, that in the act of admiring this dress, and 
of even attempting to put it on, you may stand at 
as great a distance from God, and He be as little 
in your thoughts, as in the tasteful choice of your 



THE REASONABLKNESS OF FAITH. I4j* 

apparel, for the dress and ornament of the body. 
The object of these writers is not to bring their 
readers under a sense of the dominion and authority 
of God. The main principle of their morality, ia 
not to please God, but to adorn man — to throw the 
splend )ur of virtue and accomplishment around 
him — to bring him up to what they call the end 
and the dignity of his being — to raise him to the 
perfection of his nature — and to rear a spectacle 
for the admiration of men and of angels, whom they 
figure to look down with rapture, from their high 
eminence, on the perseverance of a mortal in the 
career of worth, and integrity, and honour. Thia 
is all very fine. It makes a good picture — but 
what we insist upon is, that it is a fancy picture ; 
that, without the limits of Christianity and its 
influence, you will not meet with a single family, or 
a single individual, to realize it — that the whole range 
of human experience furnishes no resemblance to it 
— and that it is as unlike to what we find among the 
men of the world, or in the familiar walks of society, 
as the garden of Eden is unlike the desolation 
of a pestilence. The representation is beautiful 
— but more flattering than it is fair. It is a gaudy 
deception, and stands at as great a distance from 
the truth of observation, as it does from the truth 
of the New Testament. There is positively nothing 
like it in the whole round of human experience. 
It is the mere glitter of imagination. It may serve 
to throw a tinsel colouring over the pages of an 
ambitious eloquence — but with business and reality 
for our objects, we may describe tiic "^'-^ of many 
thousand families, or take our station for years in 



350 THE REASONABLENESS OF FAITH. 

the market-place, and in our attempts to realize 
the picture which has been laid before us, we will 
be sure to meet with nothing but vanity, fatigue, 
and disappointment. Now, the question we have 
to put to the disciples of this school is, are they 
really sincere in this admiration of virtue ? Is it a 
true process of sentiment within them? We are 
willing to share in their admiration, and to ascend 
the highest summit of moral excellence along with 
them. We join issue with them on their own 
prhiciple, and coupling it with the obvious and 
undeniable fact of man's depravity, we shut them up 
unto the faith. Virtue is the idol which tliey profess 
to venerate — and this virtue, as it exists in their 
own conceptions, and figures in their own disserta- 
tions, they cannot find. In proportion to their 
regard for virtue, must be their disappointment at 
missing her — and when we witness the ardour of 
their sentiments, and survey the elegance of their 
high-wrought pictures, what must be the humiliation 
of these men, we think, w hen they look on the world 
around them, and contrast the purity of their own 
sketches, with the vices and the degradation of the 
species. Grosser beings may be satisfied with the 
average morality of mankind — but if there be any 
truth in their high standard of perfection, or any 
sincerity in their aspirations after it, it is impossible 
that they can be satisfied. By one single step do 
we lead them from the high tone of academic senti« 
ment, to the sober humility of the Gospel. Give 
them their time to expatiate on virtue, and they 
cannot he too loud or eloquent in her praises. We 
have only a single sentence to add to their descrip* 



THE REASONABLENESS OF FAITH. 35 

tion : The picture is beautiful, but on the whole 
surface of the world we defy them to fasten upon 
one exemplification — and by every grace which 
they have thrown around their idol, and every 
addition they have made to her loveliness, they 
have only thrown mankind at a distance more 
helpless and more irrecoverable from their high 
standard of duty and of excellence. 

The tasteful admirer of eloquent description and 
beautiful morality, turns with disgust from those 
mortifying pictures of man, which abound ui the 
New Testament. We only ask them to combine, 
with all this finery and eloquence, what has been 
esteemed as the best attribute of a philosopher, 
respect for the evidence of observation. We ask 
them to look at man as he is, and compare him 
with man as they would have him to be. It' they 
find that he falls miserably short of their ideal 
standard of excellence, what is this but making a 
principle of their own the instrument of shutting 
them up unto the faith of the Gospel, or, at least, 
shutting them up unto one of the most peculiar of 
its doctrines, the depravity of our nature, or the 
dismal ravage which the power of sin has made 
upon the moral constitution of the species ? The 
doctrine of the academic moralist, so far from 
reaching a wound to the doctrine of the Apostle, 
gives an additional energy to ail his sentiments, 
" My mind approves the things which are more 
excellent, but how to perform that which is good, 
I find not." " I delight in the law of God after 
the inward man." " But the good that 1 would 
I do not, and the evil that I would not, that I do*" 



352 THE REASONABLENESS OF FAITH. 

But the faith of the Gospel does not stop here. 
It does not rest satisfied with shutting us up unto 
a behef of the fact of human depravity. That 
depravity it proposes to do away. It professes 
itself equal to the mighty achievement of rooting 
out the deeply seated corruption of our nature — of 
making us new creatures in Christ Jesus — of de- 
stroying the old man and his deeds, and bringing 
every rebelhous movement within us under the 
dominion of a new and a better principle. If sin- 
cere in your admiration of virtue, you are shut up 
unto the only expedient for the re-establishment of 
virtue in the world. That expedient is the Spirit 
of God working in theheartot" believers — quickening 
those who were dead in trespasses and sins, and 
bringing into action the same mighty power which 
raised Jesus from the grave, for raising us who 
believe in Jesus to newness of life and of obedience. 
This is the process of sanctification laid before us 
in the Now Testament. A wonderful process it 
undoubtedly is — but are we who walk in a world 
of mystery, who have had only a few little years to 
look about us, and are bewildered at every step 
amid the variety of God's works and of His counsels, 
are we to reject a process because it is wonderful ? 
Must no step, no operation of the mighty God be 
admitted, till it is brought under the dominion of 
our faculties? — and shall we who strut our little hour 
in the humblest of His mansions, prescribe a law 
to Him whose arm is abroad upon all worlds, and 
whose eye can take in, at a single glance, the un- 
measurable fields of creation and providence ? Be 
it as wonderful as it may— enough for us that it is 



I 



THE REASONABLENESS OF FAITH. 353 

made sure by the distinct and authentic testimony 
of heaven — and if, from the mouth of Jesus, who 
is heaven's messenger, we are told, that " unless a 
man be born of the Spirit, he cannot enter into 
the kingdom," it is our part submissively to ac- 
quiesce, and humbly to pray for it. Whatever 
repugnance others may feel to this part of the 
revealed counsels of God, those who look to a 
sublime standard of moral excellence, and sigh ibr 
the establishment of its authority in the world, 
ought to rejoice in it. It is the only remaining 
expedient for giving eifect and reality to their own 
declamations, and they are fairly shut up unto it. 
Long have they tried to repair the disorders of a 
ruined world. Many an expedient has been fallen 
upon. Temples have been reared to science and 
to virtue — and from the lofty academic chair, the 
wisdom of this world has lifted its voice amid a 
crowd of listening admirers. For thousands of 
years, the unaided powers and principles of huma- 
nity, have done their uttermost — and tell us, ye 
advocates for the dignity of the species, the amount 
* of their operation. If you refuse to answer, we 
shall answer for you — and do not hesitate to say, 
that mighty in promise, and wretched in accom- 
plishmenty you have positively done nothing — that 
all the wisdom of the schools, and all its vapouring 
demonstrations, have not had the least perceptible 
weigiit, when brought to bear upon the mass of 
Imman cJbaracter, and human performance — that 
the corruption of the inner man has not yielded at 
all to your reasoning, and remains as unsubdued 
and as obstinate a principle as ever — that the power 



354 THE REASONABLENESS OF FAITH. 

of depravity in the soul of man is beyond you— and 
that setting aside the real operation of Christiamcy 
in the hearts of individuals, and the surface dressing 
which the hand of legislation has thrown over the 
face of society, the human soul, if seen in its naked- 
ness, would still be seen in all its original deformity 
—as strong in selfishness, as lawless in propensity, 
as devoted to sense and to time, as estranged from 
God, as unmindful of the obedience, and as indif- 
ferent to the revvard and the inheritance of His 
children. 

The machine has gone into disorder — and there 
is not a single power within the compass of the 
machinery itself that is able to repair it. Ypu 
must do as you do in other cases — you must have 
recourse to some external application. The in- 
efficacy of every tried expedient shuts you up unto 
the only remaining one. Every human principle 
has been brought to bear upon it in vain ; and we 
are shut up unto the necessity of some other prin- 
ciple that is beyond humanity, and above it. The 
Spirit of God is that mighty principle. That Spirit 
which moved on the face of the waters, and made 
.ighr, and peace, and beauty to emerge out of the 
wild war of nature and her elements, is the revealed 
agent of Heaven, for repairing the disorders of sin, 
and restoring the moral creation of God to health 
and to loveliness. It will create us anew unto good 
works. It will make us again after that image in 
which we were originally formed. It will sanctify 
us by the faith that is in Jesus. And by that 
mighty power whereby it is able to subdue all things 
unto itself, it will obtain the victory over that spirit 



THE REASONABLENESS OF FAITH. 355 

which now worketh in the children of disob&dience. 
The resurrection of Jesus from the dead is the first 
fruit of its operation — and to him wiio believes it is 
the satisfying pledge of its future triumphs. That 
body, which, left to itself, would have mouldered 
into fragments, is now in all the bloom of immor- 
tality, at the right hand of the everlasting throne. 
We have tried the operation of a thousand principles 
in vain. Let us repair to this, so great in promise, 
and so mighty in performance. It has already 
achieved its wonders. It has wrought those mir- 
acles of faith and fortitude which, in the first ages 
of Christianity, threw a gleam of triumph over the 
horrors of martyrdom. It has given us displays of 
the great and the noble which are without example 
in history — and from the first moment of its oper- 
ation in the world, it has been working in those 
unseen retirements of the cottage and the family, 
where the eye of the historian never penetrates. 
The admirers of virtue are fairly shut up unto the 
faith — for faith is the only avenue that leads to it. 
*' To your faith add virtue," says the Apostle — 
and that you may be able to make the addition, 
the promise of the Spirit is given to them that 
believe. 

We should now pass on to another school, the 
school of fine feeling and poetical sentiment. It 
differs from the former in this — that while the one, 
in its dissertations on virtue, carries us up to the 
principles of duty, the other paints and admires it 
as a tasteful exhibition of what is fair and lovely in 
human character. The one makes virtue its idol 
bec^iuse of its rectitude : the other makes virtue its 



356 THE REASONABLENESS OF FAITH. 

idol because of its beauty — and the process of 
reasoning by which they are shut up unto the faith, 
is the same in both. Look at the actual state of 
the world, and we find that both the rectitude and 
the beauty are a-wanting. If you admire the one, 
and love the other, you are shut up unto the only 
expedient that is able to restore them — and that 
expedient is sanctioned by the truth of heaven, and 
has all the power of omnipotence employed in 
giving effect to the operation — the Spirit of God 
subduing all things unto itself — putting the law 
in our hearts, and writing it in our minds — and by 
bringing the soul of man under the influence of 
" whatsoever things are pure, or honest, or lovely, 
or of good report," creating a finer spectacle, and 
rearing a fairer and more unfading flower, than ever 
grew in the gardens of poetry. 

The processes are so entirely similar, that we 
would not have made it the distinct object of your 
attention, had it not been for the sake of an argu- 
ment in behalf of the faith, which may be addressed 
with great advantage to the literary and cultivated 
orders of society. There are few people of 
literary cultivation, who have not read a novel. In 
this fictitious composition, there are often one or two 
perfect characters that figure in the history', and 
delight the imagination of the reader — and you are 
at last landed in some fairy scene of happiness and 
virtue, which it is quite champing to contemplate, 
and which you would like to aspire after — perhaps 
some interesting family in the bosom of which love, 
and innocence, and tranquillity, have fixed them- 
eelves — where the dark and angry passions never 



THE REASONABLENESS OF FAITH. 357 

enter — where suspicion is unknown, and every eye 
meets another in the full glance of cordiality am 
affection — where charity reigns triumphant, and 
smiles beneficence and joy upon the humble cottages 
which surround it. Now this is very soothing, and 
very delightful. It makes one glad to think of it. 
The fancy swells with rapture, and the moral 
principle of our nature lends its full approbation 
to a scene so virtuous and so exemplary. So much 
for the dream of fancy. Let us compare it with 
the waking images of truth. Walk from Dan 
to Beersheba; and tell us, if, without and beyond 
the operation of Gospel motives and Gospel 
principles, the reality of life ever furnished a 
picture that is at all like the elegance and perfec- 
tion of this fictitious history. Go to the finest 
specimen of such a family. Take your secret 
stand, and observe them in their more retired and 
invisible moments. It is not enough to pay them 
a ceremonious visit, and observe them in the put 
on manners and holiday dress of general company. 
Loofc at them when all this disguise and finery are 
thrown aside. Yes, we have no doubt, that you 
will perceive some love, some tenderness, some 
virtue — but the rough and untutored honesty of 
truth compels us to say, that along with all this, 
there are at times mingled the bitterness of invec- 
tive, the growlings of discontent, the harpings of 
peevishness and animosity, and all that train of 
angry, suspicious, and discordant feelings, which 
embitter the heart of man, and make the reality of 
buman life a very sober affair indeed, when com- 



358 THE REASONABLENESS OF FAITH. 

pared with the high colouring of romance, and the 
sentimental extravagance of poetry. 

Now, what do we make of all this ? We infer, 
that however much we may love perfection, and 
aspire after it, yet there is some want, some disease 
in the constitution of man, which prevents his 
attainment of it — that there is a feebleness of prin- 
ciple about him — that the energy of his practice 
does not correspond to the fair promises of hL 
fancy — and however much he may delight in ar 
ideal scene of virtue and moral excellence, there ia 
some lurking malignity in his constitution, which, 
without the operation of that mighty power revealed 
10 us in the Gospel, makes it vain to wish, and 
bopelesb 'o aspire after it. 



BHO OF VOLUME SEVEMTlk 



DISCOURSES 

ON THE 

APPLICATION OF CHRISTIANITY 



COMMERCIAL Al^D ORDINARY 
AFFAIRS OF LIFE. 



PREFACE. 



This volume can be regarded in no other light, 
than as the fragment of a subject far too exteusive 
to be overtaken within a compass so narrow. There 
has only a partial survey been taken of the morality 
of the actions that are current among people 
engaged in merchandise ; and with regard to the 
morality of the affections which stir in their hearts, 
and give a feverish and diseased activity to the 
pursuits of worldly ambition, this has scarcely been 
touched upon, save in a very general way in the 
Discourse on the love of Money. 

And yet, in the estimation of every cultivated 
Christian, this second branch of the subject should 
be by far the most interesting, — as it relates to that 
spiritual discipline by which the love of the world 
is overcome ; and by which all that oppressive 
anxiety is kept in check, which the reverses and 
uncertainties of business are so apt to inject into 
the bosom ; and by which the appetite that urges 
him who hasteth to be rich is effectually restrained 
— so as to make it possible for a man to give his 
hand to the duties of his secular occupation, and, 



Wl PRErACB. 

at the same time, to maintain that sacredness o. 
heart which becomes every fleeting traveller through 
a scene, all whose pleasures and whose prospecta 
are so soon to pass away. 

There are two questions of casuistry connected 
with this part of the subject, which would demand 
no small degree of consideration. The first relates 
to the degree in which an affection for present 
things, and present interests ought to be indulged. 
And the second is, whether, on the supposition 
that a desire after the good things of the present 
life were reduced down to the standard of the 
gospel, there would remain a sufficient impulse in 
the world for upholding its commerce, at the rate 
which w^ould secure the greatest amount of comfort 
and subsistence to its families. 

Without offering any demonstration, at present, 
upon this matter, we simply state it as our opinion, 
that, though the whole business of the world were 
in the hands of men thoroughly Christia,nized, and 
who, rating wealth according to its real dimensions 
on the high scale of eternity, were chastened out 
of all their idolatrous regards to it — yet would 
trade, in these circumstances, be carried to the 
extreme limit of its being really productive or 
desirable. An affection for riches, beyond what 
Christianity prescribes, is not essential to any 
extension of commerce that is at all valuable or 
legitimate ; and, in opposition to the maxim, that 



PREFACE. Va 

the spirit of enterprise is the soul of commercial 
prosperity, do we hold, that it is the excess of this 
spirit beyond the moderation of th3 New Testa- 
ment, which, pressing on the natural boundaries 
of trade, is sure, at length, to visit every country, 
where it operates with the recoil of all those 
calamities, which, in the shape of beggared 
capitalists, and unemployed operatives, and dreary 
intervals of bankruptcy and alarm, are observed 
to follow a season of overdone speculation. 

We have added seven Discourses to those which 
appeared in the original volume. In the selection 
of these, we have been guided by the consideration, 
that the duty of citizens, and the duty of Christian 
philanthropists, and more especially the duty of 
those who belong to the humbler classes of society, 
are at all times topics of pressing and peculiar 
interest, in those places where commerce has 
assembled together its masses of large and conti- 
guous population. The Chrisuanity which is all 
things to all men, can adapt its lessons to all the 
possible varieties of huniaii life 



CONTENTS^ 



DISCOURSE I. 

oil THE UERCANTILE VIETDES WHICH HAT EXIST WITH- 
OOT THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

*' Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever 
things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever 
things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever 
things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there 
be any praise, think on these things." — Phil. iv. 8. 18 

DISCOURSE II. 

THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY IN AIDING AND AUG- 
MENTING THE MERCANTILE VIRTUES. 

" For he that in these things servetb Christ is acceptable to 
Qod, and approved of men." — Rom. xiv. 18. . . 3« 

DISCOURSE III. 

THE FOWEROF SELFISHNESS IN PROMOTING THE HONESTIES 
OF MERCANTILE INTERCOURSE. 

" And if you do good to them which do good to you, what 
thnnkbave ye ? for sinners also do even the same." — LuKB 
vi. 33 . 6« 

DISCOURSE IV. 

THB GDXLT OF DISHONESTY NOT TO BE ESTIMATED BT 
THE GAIN OF IT. 

•• He thai is faithful in that which is least, is faithful also in 
muck ; and he that is unjust in the least, is unjust alao 
in much." — Luke xvi. 10 M 



S CONTENTS. 

DISCOURSE V. 

OK THE GREAT CHEI8TIAN LAW OF RECIPROCITY BETWEEN 
MAN AND MAN. 

Therefore all thing* whatsoever ye would that men should 
do to you, do ye even so to them ; for this is the law and 
the prophets." — Matt. vii. 12 Ill 

DISCOURSE VI. 

ON THE DISSIPATION OF LARGE CITIES. 

•• Let no man deceive you with vain words : for because of 
these thinars cometh the wrath of God upon the chilJnjQ 
of disobedience.** — Ephes. v. 6. .... 194 

DISCOURSE VII. 

OB THKTITIATING INFLUENCE OF THE HIGHER UPON THS 
LOWEa ORDERS OF SOCIETY. 

** Then said he unto his disciples, It is impossible but that 
offencw will come : but woe unto him throu<^h whom they 
come! It were better for him that a millstone were hanged 
about his neck, and he cast into the sea, than that he should 
offend one of these little ones." — Luke xvii. ], 2. . 169 

DISCOURSE VIII. 

ON THE LOVE OF MONEY. 

*• If I have made gold my hope, or have said to the fine gold. 
Thou art my confidence ; if I rejoiced because my wealth 
was great, and because mine hand had gotten much ; if I 
beheld the sun when it shined, or the moon walking in 
brightness ; and my heart hath been secretly enticed, or 
my mouth hath kissed my hand: this also were an iniquity 
to be punished by the judge : for I should have denied the 
God that is above." — Job xxxi. 24 — 28- . . .187 

DISCOURSE IX. 

THE EXPULSIVE POWER OF A NEW AFFECTION. 

" Lore not the world, neither the things that are in the 
world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father 
is not in him." — 1 John ii. 15 ttoa 



CONTENTS. XI 

DISCOURSE X. 

THK RESTLESSNESS Or UOMAN AMBITION. 

•• How say ye to my soul, Flee as a bird to your mountain ?'* 

•' O that I had the wings of a dove, that I may fly 

away, aad be at rest."^P3\LM xi. 1. and Iv, 6. . 23i 

DISCOURSE XI. 

ON THE ADVANTAGE OF CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE TO THE 
LOWER OaOEHS OF SOCIETY. 

" Better is a poor and a wise child than an old and foolish 
king, who will no more be admonished." — EccLES. iv. 13. 249 

DISCOURSE XII. 

ON THE DUTY AND THE MEANS OF CHRISTIANIZING OUB 
HOME POPULATION. 

" And he said unto them. Go ye into all the world, and 
preach the Gospel to every creature." — Mark xvi. 15. 265 

DISCOURSE XIII. 

ON THE HONOUR DUE TO ALL MEN. 

*• Honour all men. — —Honour the king." — 1 Peter ii. 17. 284 
DISCOURSE XIV. 

CN THE MORAL INFLUENCE OF FIDELITY. 

" Not purloining, but showing all good fidelity ; that they 
may adorn the doctrine of God our Saviour in all things." 
— Titus ii. 10 30J 

DISCOURSE XV. 

THE IMPORTANCE OF CIVIL GOVERNMENT TO SOCIETY. 

♦' What then ? are we better than they ? No, in no wise : 
for we have before proved both Jews and Gentiles, that 
they are all under ain , As it is written. There is none 
righteous, no, not one : There is none that understandeth, 
there is none that seeketh after God. They are all gone 
out of the way, they are together become unprofitable ; 
there is none that doelh good, no, not one. Tlieir throat 



jth CONTENTS. 

M an open aepnlchre ; with their tongues they hare uej 
deceit ; the poison of asps is under their lips : Whose 
mouth is full of cursing and bitterness ; Their feet are 
swift to shed blood : Destruction and misery are in their 
ways: And the way of peace have they not known : There 
is no fear of God before their eyes. Now we know, that 
what things soever the law saith, it saith to them who 
are under the law ; that every mouth may be stopped, 
fend all the world may become guilty before God."— 

AMI ill »— i«i aas 



DISCOURSE I. 

ON THE MERCANTILE VIRTUES WHICH MAY 

EXIST V/ITHOUT THE INFLUENCE OF 

CHRISTIANITY. 



•• Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever 
things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever 
things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever 
things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if 
thero be any praise, think on these things."— Phil. iv. 8. 

The Apostle, in these verses, makes use of cer- 
tain terms, without ever once proposing to advance 
any definition of their meaning. He presumes 
on a common understanding of this, between 
himself and the people whom he is addressing. 
He presumes that they know what is signified by 
Truth, and Justice, and Lovelir ess, and the other 
moral qualities which are included in the enumera- 
tion of our text. They, in fact, had words to 
express them, for many ages antecedent to the 
coming of Christianity into the world. Now, the 
very existence of the words proves, that, before 
the gospel was taught, the realities which they 
express must have existed also. These good and 
respectable attributes of character must have been 
occasionally exemplified by men, prior to tha 



14 ON THE MERCANTILE VIRTUES. 

religion of the New Testament. The virtuoua 
and the praiseworthy must, ere the commencement 
of the new dispensation, have been met with in 
society — for the Apostle does not take them up in 
this passage, as if they were unknown and unheard 
of novelties — but such objects of general recogni- 
tion, as could be understood on the bare mention 
of them, without warning and without explanation. 
But more than this. These virtues must not 
only have been exemplified by men, previous to 
the entrance of the gospel amongst them — seeing 
that the terms, expressive of the virtues, were 
perfectly understood — but men must have known 
how to love and to admire them. How is it that 
we apply the epithet lovely to any moral qualifica- 
tion, but only in as far as that qualification does in 
fact draw towards it a sentiment of love ? How 
is it that another qualification is said to be of good 
report, but in as far as it has received from men 
an applauding or an honourable testimony ? The 
Apostle does not bid his readers have respect to 
Buch things as are lovely, and then, for the purpose 
of saving them from error, enumerate what the 
things are which he conceives to possess this 
qualification. He commits the matter, with per- 
fect confidence, to their own sense and their own 
apprehension. He bids them bear a respect to 
whatsoever things are lovely — nor does he seem at 
all suspicious, that, by so doing, he leaves them in 
any darkness or uncertainty about the precise 
import of the advice which he is delivering. He 
therefore recognises the competency of men to 
estimate the lovely and the honourable of charac- 



ON THE MERCANTILE VIRTUES. 15 

ter. He appeals to a tribunal in their own breasts, 
and evidently supposes, that, antecedently to the 
light of the Christian revelation, there lay scattered 
among the species certain principles of feeling and 
of action, in virtue of which, they both occasionally 
exhibited what was just, and true, and of good 
report, and also could render to such an exhibition 
the homage of their regard and of their reverence. 
At present we shall postpone the direct enforce- 
ment of these virtues upon the observation of 
Christians, and shall confine our thoughts of them 
to the object of estimating their precise importance 
and character, when they are realized by those 
who are not Christians. 

While we assert with zeal eVery doctrine of 
Christianity, let us not forget that there is a zeal 
without discrimination ; and that, to bring such a 
spirit to the defence of our faith, or of any one of 
its peculiarities, is not to vindicate the cause, but 
to discredit it. Now, there is a way of maintaining 
the utter depravity of our nature, and of doing it 
in such a style of sweeping and of vehement 
asseveration, as to render it not merely obnoxious 
to the taste, but obnoxious to the understanding. 
On this subject there is often a roundness and a 
temerity of announcement, which any intelligent 
man, looking at the phenomena of human character 
with his own eyes, cannot go along with ; and thus 
it is, that there are injudicious defenders of ortho- 
doxy, who have mustered against it not merel}'^ a 
positive dislike, but a positive strength of observa- 
tion and argument. Let the nature of man be a 
ruin, as it certainly is, it is obvious to the most 



16 ON THE MERCANTILE VIRTUES. 

common discernment, that it does not offer on« 
unvaried and unalleviated mass of deformity. 
There are certain phases, and certain exhibitions 
of this nature which are more lovely than others 
— certain traits of character, not due to the opera- 
tion of Christianity at all, and yet calling forth our 
admiration and our tenderness — certain varieties 
of moral complexion, far more fair and more 
engaging than certain other varieties; and to prove 
that the gospel may have had no share in the 
formation of them, they in fact stood out to the 
notice and respect of the world, before the gospel 
was ever heard of. The classic page of antiquity 
sparkles with repeated exemplifications of what is 
bright and beautiful in the character of man ; nor 
do all its descriptions of external nature waken up 
such an enthusiasm of pleasure, as when it bears 
testimony to some graceful or elevated doing out 
of the history of the species. And whether it be 
the kindliness of maternal affection, or the un- 
weariedness of filial piety, or the constancy of tried 
and unalterable friendship, or the earnestness of 
devoted patriotism, or the rigour of unbending 
fidelity, or any other of the recorded virtues, which 
shed a glory over the remembrance of Greece and 
of Rome — we fully concede it to the admiring 
scholar, that they one and all of them were some- 
times exemplified in those days of heathenism ; and 
that, out of the materials of a period, crowded as 
it was with moral abominations, there may also be 
gathered things which are pure, and lovely, and 
true, and just, and honest, and of good report. 
What do we mean, then, it may be asked, by 



ON THE MEUCAN'IILE VIRTUES. 17 

the universal depravity of man ? How shall we 
reconcile the admission now made, with the un- 
qualified and authoritative language of the Bible, 
when it tells us of the totality and the magnitude 
of human corruption ? Wherein lies that desper- 
ate wickedness, which is every where ascribed to 
all the men of all the families that be on the face 
of the earth ? And how can such a tribute of 
acknowledgment be awarded to the sages and the 
patriots of antiquity, who yet, as the partakers of 
our fallen nature, must be outcasts from the favour 
of God, and have the character of evil stamped 
upon the imaginations of the thoughts of their 
hearts continually. 

In reply to these questions, let us speak to 
your own experimental recollections on a subject 
in which you are aid«d both by the consciousness 
of what passes within you, and by your observa- 
tion of the character of others. Might not a sense 
of honour elevate that heart which is totally 
unfurnished with a sense of God? Might not an 
impulse of compassionate feeling be sent into that 
bosom which is never once visited by a movement 
of duteous loyalty towards the Lawgiver in hea- 
ven? Might not occasions of intercourse with 
the beings around us, develop whatever there is 
in our nature of generosity, and friendship, and 
integrity, and patriotism; and yet the unseen 
Being, who placed us in this theatre, be neither 
loved, nor obeyed, nor listened to ? Amid the 
manifold varieties of human character, and the 
number of constitutional principles which enter 
into its composition, might there not be an 



18 ON THE MEHCANTILE VIRTUES, 

individual in whom the constitutional virtues sc 
bkze forth and have the ascendancy, as to give a 
general effect of gracefulness to the whole of this 
moral exhibition; and yet, may not that individual 
be as unmindful of his God, as if the principles of 
his constitution had been mixed up in such a dif- 
ferent proportion, as to make him an odious and 
a revolting spectacle ? In a word, might not 
Sensibility shed forth its tears, and Friendship 
perform its services, and Liberality impart of its 
treasure,- and Patriotism earn the gratitude of its 
country, and Honour maintain itself entire and 
untainted, and all the softenings of what is 
amiable, and all the glories of what is chivalrous 
and manly, gather into one bright efFulgency of 
moral accomplishment on the person of him who 
never, for a single day of his life, subordinates 
one habit, or one affection, to the will of the 
Almighty ; who is just as careless and as uncon- 
cerned about God, as if the native tendencies of 
his constitution had compounded him into a 
monster of deformity ; and who just as effectually 
realizes this attribute of rebellion against his 
Maker, as the most loathsome and profligate of 
the species, that he walks in the counsel of his 
own heart, and after the sight of his own eyes? 

The same constitutional variety may be seen 
on the lower fields of creation. You there witness 
the gentleness of one animal, the affectionate 
fidelity of another, the cruel and unrelenting 
ferocity of a third ; and you never question the 
propriety of the language, when some of these 
instinctive tende'icies are better reported of than 



ON THE MERCANTILE VIRTUES. 19 

others ; or when it is said of the former of them, 
that they are the more fine, and amiable, and en- 
dearing. But it does not once occur to you, that, 
even in the very best of these exhibitions, there is 
any sense of God, or that the great master- 
principle of his authority is at all concerned in it. 
Transfer this contemplation back again to our 
species ; and under the same complexional differ- 
ence of the more and the less lovely, or the more 
and the less hateful, you will perceive the same 
utter insensibility to the consideration of a God, 
or the same utter inefficiency on the part of his 
law to subdue human habits and human inclinations. 
It is true, that there is one distinction between the 
two cases ; but it all goes to aggravate the guilt 
and the ingratitude of man. He has an under- 
standing which the inferior animals have not — and 
yet, with this understanding, does he refuse practi- 
cally to acknowledge God. He has a conscience, 
which they have not — and yet, though it whisper 
in the ear of his inner man the claims of an unseen 
Legislator, does he lull away his time in the slum- 
bers of indifference, and live without him in the 
world. 

Or go to the people of another planet, over whom 
the hold of allegiance to their Maker is unbroken 
— in whose hearts the Supreme sits enthroned, 
and throughout the whole of whose history there 
runs the perpetual and the unfailing habit of sub- 
ordination to his law. It is conceivable, that with 
them too, there may be varieties of temper and of 
natural inclination, and yet all of them be under 
the effective control jf one great and imperioui 



20 ON THE MERCANTILE VIRTUES. 

principle ; that, in subjection to the will of God, 
every kind and every honourable disposition ig 
cherished to the uttermost; and that in subjec- 
tion to the same will, every tendency to anger, and 
malignity, and revenge, is repressed at the first 
moment of its threatened operation ; and that, in 
this way, there will be the fostering of a constant 
encouragement given to the one set of instincts, 
and the struggling of a constant opposition made 
against the other. Now, only conceive this great 
bond of allegiance to be dissolved ; the mighty and 
subordinating principle, which wont to wield an 
ascendancy over every movement and every affec- 
tion, to be loosened and done away ; and then 
would this loyal, obedient world become what ours 
is — independent of Christianity. Every constitu- 
tional desire would run out, in the unchecked 
spontaneity of its own movements. The law of 
heaven would furnish no counteraction to the 
impulses and the tendencies of nature. And tell 
us, in these circumstances, when the restraint ot 
religion was thus lifted off, and all the passions let 
>ut to take their own tumultuous and independent 
career — tell us, if, though amid the uproar of the 
licentious and vindictive propensities, there did 
gleam forth at times some of the finer and the 
lovelier sympathies of nature — tell us, it" this would 
at all affect the state of that world as a state of 
enmity against God; where his will was reduced 
to an element of utter insignificancy ; where the 
voice of their rightful master fell powerless on the 
consciences of a listless and alienated family ; where 
humour, and interest, and propensity — at one tim« 



ON THE MERCANTILE VIRTUES. 21 

lelfish, and at another social — took their alternate 
sway over those hearts from which there was ex- 
cluded all effectual sense of an overruling God? 
If he be unheeded and disowned by the creatures 
whom he has formed, can it be said to alleviate the 
deformity of their rebellion, that they, at times, 
experience the impulse of some amiable feeling 
which he hath implanted, or at times hold out 
some beauteousness of aspect which he hath shed 
over them ? Shall the value or the multitude of 
the gifts release them from their loyalty to the giver; 
and when nature puts herself into the attitude of 
indifference or hostility against him, how is it that 
the graces and the accomplishments of nature can 
be pled in mitigation of her antipathy to him, who 
invested nature with all her graces, and upholds 
her in the display of all her accomplishments ? 

The way, then, to assert the depravity of man, 
is to fasten on the radical element of depravity, 
and to show how deeply it lies incorporated with 
his moral constitution. It is not by an utterance 
of rash and sweeping totality to refuse him the 
possession of what is kind in sympathy, or of what 
is dignified in principle — for this were in the face 
of all observation. It is to charge him direct with 
his utter disloyalty to God. It is to convict him 
of treason against the majesty of heaven. It is to 
press home upon him the impiety of not caring 
about God. It is to tell him, that the hourly and 
habitual language of his heart is, I will not have 
the Being who made me to rule over me. It is to 
go to the man of honour, and, while we frankly 
award it to him that his pulse beats high in tho 



22 ON THE MERCANTILE VIRTUES. 

pride of integrity — it is to tell him, that he w1m> 
keeps it in living play, and who sustains the lofti- 
ness of its movements, and who, in one moment of 
time, could arrest it for ever, is not in all his 
thoughts. It is to go to the man of soft and 
gentle emotions, and, while we gaze in tenderness 
upon him, it is to read to him, out of his own 
character, how the exquisite mechanism of feeling 
may be in full operation, while he who framed it is 
forgotten ; while he who poured into his constitution 
the milk of human kindness, may never be adverted 
to with one single sentiment of veneration, or one 
single purpose of obedience; while he who gave 
him his gentler nature, who clothed him in all its 
adornments, and in virtue of whose appointment it 
is, that, instead of an odious and a revolting monster, 
he is the much loved child of sensibility, may be 
utterly disowned by him. In a word, it is to go 
round among all that Humanity has to offer in the 
shape of fair, and amiable, and engaging, and to 
prove how deeply Humanity has revolted against 
that Being who has done so much to beautify and 
exalt her. It is to prove that the carnal mind, 
under all its varied complexions of harshness or of 
delicacy, is enmity against God. It is to prove 
that, let nature be as rich as she may in moral 
accomplishments, and let the most favoured of her 
sons realize upon his own person the finest and the 
fullest assemblage of them — should he, at tha 
moment of leaving this theatre of display, and 
bursting loose from the framework of mortality, 
Btand in the presence of his Judge, and have the 
question put to him, What hast thou done unto 



\ 



ON THE MERCANTILE VIRTUES. 23 

me ? this man of constitutional virtue, with all the 
Balutations he got upon earth, and all the reverence 
that he has left behind him, may, naked and 
defenceless, before Him who sitteth on the throne, 
be left without a plea and without an argument. 

God's controversy with our species is not, that 
the glow of honour or of humanity is never felt 
amongthem. Itis, that none of themunderstandeth, 
and none of them seeketh after God. It is, that 
He is deposed from his rightful ascendancy. It is, 
that He, who in fact inserted in the human bosom 
every one principle that can embellish the individual 
possessor, or maintain the order of society, is 
banished altogether from the circle of his habitual 
contemplations. It is, that man taketh his way 
in life as much at random, as if there was no 
presiding Divinity at all ; and that, whether he at 
one time grovel in the depths of sensuality, or at 
another kindle with some generous movement of 
sympathy or of patriotism, he is at both times alike 
unmindful of Him to whom he owes his continuance 
and his birth. It is, that he moves his every 
footstep at his own will ; and has utterly discarded, 
from its supremacy over him, the will of that 
invisible Master who compasses all his goings, and 
never ceases to pursue bun by the claims of a 
resistless and legitimate authority. It is this 
which is the essential or the constitutmg principle 
of rebellion against God. This it is which has 
exiled the planet we live in beyond the limits 
of His favoured creation — and whether it be 
shrouded in the turpitude of licentiousness of 
cruelty, or occasionally brightened with the gleam 



24 ON THE MERCANTILE VIRTUES. 

of the kindly and the honourable virtues, it is thus 
that it is seen as afar off, by Him who sitteth on 
the throne, and looketh on our strayed world, as 
athwart a wide and a dreary gulf of separation. 

And when prompted by love towards His aUen- 
ated children, He devised a way of recalling them 
. — when willing to pass over all the ingratitude 
He had gotten from their hands, He reared a 
pathway of return, and proclaimed a pardon and 
a welcome to all who should walk upon it — when 
through the offered Mediator, who magnified His 
broken law, and upheld, by His mysterious sacri- 
fice, the dignity of that government which the 
children of Adam had disowned. He invited all to 
come to Him and be saved — should this message 
be brought to the door of the most honourable 
man upon earth, and he turn in contempt and 
hostility away from it, has not that man posted 
himself more firmly than ever on the ground of 
rebellion ? Though an unsullied integrity should 
rest upon all his transactions, and the homage of 
confidence and respect be awarded to him from every 
quarter of so«iety, has not this man, by slighting 
the overtures of reconciliation, just plunged himselt 
the deeper in the guilt of wilful and determined 
ungodliness ? Has not the creature exalted itself 
above the Creator ; and in the pride of those 
accomplishments, which never would have invested 
his person had not they come to him frOm above, 
has he not, in the act of resisting the gospel, 
aggravated the provocation of his whole previous 
defiance to the author of it? 

Thus much for all that is amiable, and for all 



ON THE MERCANTII.li: VIRTUES. 25 

tliat is manly, in the aoconiplishments of nature, 
when disjoined from the faith of Christianity. 
They take up a separate residence in the human 
character from the principle of godliness. An- 
terior to this religion, they go not to alleviate the 
guilt of our departure from the living God ; and 
subsequently to this religion, they may blazon the 
character of him who stands out against it: but on 
the principles of a most clear and intelligent equity, 
they never can shield him from the condemnation 
and the curse of those who have neglected the 
great salvation. 

The doctrine of the New Testament will bear 
to be confronted with all that can be met or noticed 
on the face of human society. And we speak most 
confidently, to the experience of many, when we 
say, that often, in the course of their manifold 
transactions, have they met the man, whom the 
bribery of no advantage whatever could seduce into 
the slightest deviation from the path of integrity — 
the man, who felt his nature within him put into a 
state of the most painful indignancy, at every thing 
that bore upon it the character of a sneaking or 
dishonourable artifice — the man, who positively 
could not be at rest under the consciousness 
that he had ever betrayed, even to his own heart, 
the remotest symptom of such an inclination — 
and whom, therefore, the unaided law of justice 
and of truth has placed on a high and deserved 
eminence in the walks of honourable merchandise. 

Let us not withhold from this character the 
trilmte of i.Ls most rightful admiration ; but let us 
further ask, if, with all that he thus possessed of 

VOL. Xf. B 



S6 ON THE MERCANTILE VIRTUES. 

native feeling and constitutional integrity, there 
was never observed in any such individual an utter 
emptiness of religion ; and that God is not in all 
his thoughts ; and that, when he does what happens 
to be at one with the will of the Lawgiver, it is 
not because he is impelled to it by a sense of its 
being the will of the Lawgiver, but because he is 
impelled to it by the working of his own instinctive 
sensibilities ; and that, however fortunate, or 
however estimable these sensibilities are, they 
still consist with the habit of a mind that is in a 
state of total indifference about God ? Have we 
never read in our own character, or in the observed 
character of others, that the claims of the Divinity 
may be entirely forgotten by the very man to whom 
society around him yield, and rightly yield, the 
homage of an unsullied and honourable reputation ; 
that this man may have all his foundations in the 
world ; that every security on which he rests, and 
every enjoyment upon which his heart is set, lieth 
on this side of death ; that a sense of the coming 
day on which God is to enter into judgment with 
him, is, to every purpose of practical ascendancy, 
as good as expunged altogether from his bosom ; 
that he is far in desire, and far in enjoyment, and 
far in habitual contemplation, away from that God 
who is not far from any one of us; that his extending 
credit, and his brightening prosperity, and hit 
magnificent retreat from business, with all the- 
splendour of its accommodations — that these are 
the futurities at which he terminates ; and that hf 
goes not in thought beyond them to that eternity, 
irhich, in the flight of a few Uttle years, will abaan 



ON THE MERCANTILE VIRTUES. 27 

all, and annihilate all ? In a word, have we never 
observed the man, who, with all that was right in 
mercantile principle, and all that was open and 
unimpeachable in the habit of his mercantile trans- 
actions, lived in a state of utter estrangement from 
the concei'ns of immortality ? who, in reference to 
God, persisted, from one year to another, in the 
spirit of a deep slumber? who, in reference to 
the man that tries to awaken him out of his lethargy, 
recoils, with the most sensitive dislike, from the 
faithfulness of his ministrations ? who, in reference 
to the B®ok which tells him of his nakedness and 
his guilt, never consults it with one practical aim, 
and never tries to penetrate beyond that aspect of 
mysteriousness which it holds out to an undiscerning 
world ? who attends not church, or attends it with 
all the lifelessness of a form ? who reads not his 
Bible, or reads itinthe discharge of a self-prescribed 
and unfruitful task ? who prays not, or prays with 
the mockery of an unmeaning observation ? and, in 
one word, who, while surrounded by all those 
testimonies which give to man a place of moral 
distinction among his fellows, is living in utter 
carelessness about God, and about all the avenues 
which lead to him ? 

Now, attend for a moment to what that is which 
the man has, and to what that is which he has not. 
He has an attribute of character which is in itself 
pure, and lovely, and honourable, and of good 
report. He has a natural principle of integrity ; 
and under its impulse he may be carried forward 
to such fine exhibitions of himself, as are worthy of 
all admiration. It is very noble when the simple 



2b ON THE MKRCANTILE VIRTUES. 

Utterance of his word carries as much security 
along with it, as if he had accompanied that 
utterance by the signatures, and the securifcies, 
and the legal obligations, which are required of 
other men. Ic might tempt one to be proud of 
his species when he looks at the faith that is put 
in him by a distant correspondent, who, without 
cue other hold of him than his honour, consigns to 
him the wealth of a whole flotilla, and sleeps in 
the confidence that it is safe. It is indeed an 
animating thought, amid the gloom of this world's 
depravity, when we behold the credit which one 
man puts in another, though separated by oceans 
and by continents ; when he fixes the anchor of a 
sure and steady dependence on the reported 
honesty of one whom he never saw ; when, with all 
his fears for the treachery of the varied elements, 
through which his property has to pass, he knows, 
that should it only arrive at the door of its destined 
agent, all his fears and all his suspicions may be 
at an end. We know nothing finer than such an 
act of homage from one human being to another, 
when perhaps the diameter of the globe is between 
them ; nor do we think that either the renown oi 
her victories, or the wisdom of her counsels, so 
signalizes the country in which we live, as does 
the honourable deahng of her merchants ; that all 
the glories of British policy, and British valour, 
are far eclipsed by the moral splendour which 
British faith has thrown over the name and the 
character of our nation : nor has she gathered so 
proud a distinction from all the tributaries of her 
T>ower, as she has done from the awarded confi- 



ON THE MERCANTILE VIRTUE*. 29 

dence of those men of all tribes, and colours, and 
languages, who look to our agency for the most 
faithful of all management, and to our keeping for 
the most unviolable of all custody. 

There is no denying, then, the very extended 
prevalence of a principle of integrity in the com- 
mercial world ; and he who has such a principle 
within him, has that to which all the epithets of 
our text may rightly be appropriated. But it is 
just as impossible to deny, that, with this thing 
which he has, there may be another thing which 
he has not. He may not have one duteous feel- 
ing of reverence which points upward to God. 
He may not have one wish, or one anticipation, 
which points forward to eternity. He may not 
have any sense of dependence on the Being who 
sustains him; and who gave him his very principle 
of honour, as part of that interior furniture which 
he has put into his bosom ; and who surrounded 
him with the theatre on which he has come for- 
ward with the finest and most illustrious displays 
of it ; and who set the whole machinery of his 
sentiment and action a-going ; and can, by a single 
word of his power, bid it cease from the variety, 
and cease from the gracefulness, of its movements. 
In other words, he is a man of integrity, and yet 
he is a man of ungodliness. He is a man born for 
the confidence and the admiration of his fellows, 
and yet a man whom his Maker can charge with 
utter defection from all the principles of a spiritual 
obedience. He is a man whose virtues have 
blazoned his own character in time, and have 
upheld the interests of society, and yet a man who 



50 ON THE MERCANTILE VIllTUES. 

has not, by one movement of principle, br'>ught 
hi-caself nearer to the kingdom of lieaven, than the 
most proftigate of the species. The condemnation, 
that he h an alien from God, rests upon him in all 
the weight of its unmitigated severity. The 
threat, that they who forget God shall be turned 
into hell, will, on the great day of its fell and sweep- 
ing operation, involve him among the wretched 
outcasts of eternity. That God from whom, while 
in the world, he withheld every due offering of 
gratitude, and remembrance, and universal subor- 
dination of habit and of desire, will show him to 
his face, how, under the delusive garb of such 
sympathies as drew upon him the love of his 
acquaintances, and of such integrities as drew upon 
him their respect and their confidence, he was in 
fact a determined rebel against the authority of 
heaven ; that not one commandment of the law, in 
the true extent of its interpretation, was ever ful- 
filled by him ; that the pervading principle of 
obedience to this law, which is love to God, never 
had its ascendancy over him ; that the beseeching 
voice of the Lawgiver, so offended and so insulted 
— but who, nevertheless, devised in love a way of 
reconciliation for the guilty, never had the effect of 
recalling him; tliat, in fact, he neither had a wish for 
the friendship of God, nor cherished the hope of en- 
joying Him — and that, therefore, as he lived without 
hope, so he lived without God in the world; finding 
all his desire, and all his sufficiency, to be somewhere 
else, than in that favour which is better than life; 
and so, in addition to the curse of having continued 
not in all the words of the book of God's law to da 



ON THE MERCANTILE VIRTUES. 31 

them, entailing upon himself the mighty aggravation 
of having neglected yll the offers of His gospel. 

We say, then, of this natural virtue, what our 
Saviour said of the virtue of the Pharisees, many 
of whom were not extortioners, as other men — 
that, verily, it hath its reward. When disjoined 
from a sense of God, it is of no religious estima- 
tion whatever; nor will it lead to any religious 
blessing, either in time or in eternity. It has, 
however, its enjoyments annexed to it, just as a 
fine taste has its enjoyments annexed to i't; and in 
these is it abundantly rewarded. It is exempted 
from that painfulness of inward feeling which 
nature has annexed to every act of departure from 
honesty. It is sustained by a conscious sense of 
rectitude and elevation. It is gratified by the 
homage of society ; the members of which are ever 
ready to award the tribute of acknowledgment to 
those virtues that support the interests of society. 
And, finally, it may be said, that prosperity, with 
some occasional variations, is the general accom- 
paniment of that credit, which every man of 
undeviating justice is sure to draw around him. 
But what reward, will you tell us, is due to him 
on the great day of the manifestation of God's 
righteousness, when, in fact, he has done nothing 
unto God? What recompense can be awarded 
to him out of those books which are then to be 
opened, and in which he stands recorded as a man 
overcharged with the guilt of spiritual idolatry ? 
How shall God grant unto him the reward of a 
servant, v/hen the service of God was not the 
principle of his doings in the world; and when 



32 ON THE MERCANTILE VIRTUES. 

neither the justice he rendered to others, nor the 
sensibility that he felt for them, bore the slightest 
character of an offering to his Maker? 

But wherever the religious principle has taken 
possession of the mind, it animates these virtues 
with a new spirit ; and when so animated, all such 
things as are pure, and lovely, and just, and true, 
and honest, and of good report, have a religious 
importance and character belonging to them. The 
text forms part of an epistle addressed to all the 
saints in Christ Jesus, which were at Philippi; and 
the lesson of the text is matter of direct and 
authoritative enforcement, on all who are saints in 
Christ Jesus, at the present day. Christianity, 
with the weight of its positive sanctions on the side 
of what is amiable and honourable in human virtue, 
causes such an influence to rest on the character 
of its genuine disciples, that, on the ground both 
of inflexible justice and ever-breathing charity, 
they are ever sure to leave the vast majority of the 
world behind them. Simplicity and godly sincerity 
form essential ingredients of that peculiarity by 
which they stand signalized in the midst of an 
ungodly generation. The true friends of the 
gospel, tremblingly alive to the honour of their 
Master's cause, blush for the disgrace that ha-s 
been brought on it by men who keep its Sabbaths, 
and yield an ostentatious homage to its doctrines 
and its sacraments. They utterly disclaim all 
fellowship with that vile association of cant and 
of duplicity, which has sometimes been exemplified, 
to the triumph of the enemies of religion ; and 
they bcth feel the solemn truth, and act on the 



ON THE MERCANTILE VIRTUES. S3 

•uthority of the saying, that neither thieves, cor 
liars, nor extortioners, nor unrighteous persoaa, 
have any part in the kingdom of Christ and uf 
Gad. 



34 THE INFLDKNCE OF CHRISTIANITY 



DISCOURSE II. 

THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY IN AID. 
ING AND AUGMENTING THE MERCANTILE 
VIRTUES. 

" For he that in the?e things serveth Christ is acceptable to God, 
and approved of men." — Rom. xiv. 18. 

We have already asserted the natural existence of 
sucn principles in the heart of man, as lead him 
to many graceful and to many honourable exhibi- 
tions of character. We have further asserted, 
that this formed no deduction whatever from that 
article of orthodoxy which aflSrms the utter depravity 
of our nature ; that the essence of this depravity 
lies in man having broken loose from the authority 
of God, and delivered himself wholly up to the 
guidance of his own inclinations ; that though some 
of these inclinations are in themselves amiable 
features of human character, and point in their 
effects to what is most useful to human society, 
yet devoid as they all are of any reference to the 
will and to the rightful sovereignty of the Supreme 
Being, they could not avert, or even so much as 
alleviate, that charge of ungodliness, which may be 
fully carried round amongst all the sons and daugh- 
ters of the species ; that they furnish not the mate- 
rials of any valid or satisfactory answer to the 
question, "What hast thou done unto God?" 
and that whether they are the desires of a native 
rectitude, or the desires of an instinctive benevo- 



THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 35 

lence, they go not to purge away the guilt of 
having no love, and no care, for the Being who 
formed and who sustains us. 

But what is more. If the virtues and accom- 
plishments of nature are at all to be admitted into 
the controversy between God and man, instead of 
forming any abatement upon the enormity of our 
guilt, they stamp upon it the reproach of a still 
deeper and more determined ingratitude. Let us 
conceive it possible, for a moment, that the beauti- 
ful personifications of Scripture were all realized ; 
that the trees of the forest clapped their hands 
unto God, and that the isles were glad at His 
presence ; that the little hills shouted on every 
side, and the valleys covered over with corn sent 
forth their notes of rejoicing; that the sun and 
the moon praised Him, and the stars of light 
joined in the solemn adoration ; that the voice of 
glory to God was heard from every mountain and 
from every waterfall, and that all nature, animated 
throughout by the consciousness of a pervading 
and a presiding Deity, burst into one loud and 
universal song of gratulation. Would not a strain 
of greater loftiness be heard to ascend from those 
regions where the all-working God had left the 
traces of His own immensity, than from the tamer 
and the humbler scenery of an ordinary landscape ? 
Should not we look for a gladder acclamation 
from the fertile field, than from the arid waste, 
where no character of grandeur made up for the 
barrenness that was around us ? Would not the 
goodly tree, compassed about with the glories of 
its summer foliage, lift up an anth^-m of louder 



36 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITT 

gra.titude, than the lowlv shrub that srew beneath 
it? Would not the flower, from whose leaves 
every hue of lovelmess was rejected, send ibr*b 
a sweeter rapture than the russet weed, which 
never drew the eye of any admiring passena^er ^ 
And, in a word, wherever we saw the towering 
eminences of nature, or the garniture of her more 
rich and beauteous adornments, would it not be 
there that we looked for the deepest tones of devo- 
tion, or there for the tenderest and most exquisite 
of its melodies ? 

There is both the sublime of character, and the 
beauteous of character, exemplified upon man. 
We have the one in that high sense of honour, 
which no interest and no terror can seduce from 
any of its obligations. We have the other in that 
kindliness of feeling, which one look or one sit^h 
of imploring distress can touch into liveliest 
sympathy. Only grant, that we have nothing 
either in the constitution of our spirits, or in the 
structure of our bodies, which we did not receive • 
and that mind, with all its varieties, is as much the 
product of a creating hand, as matter in all its 
modifications ; and then, on the face of human 
society, do we witness all the gradations of a moral 
scenery, which may be directly referred to the 
operation of Him who worketh all in all. It is 
our belief, that, as to any effectual sense of God, 
there is as deep a slumber throughout, the whole 
of this world's living and rational generations, as 
there is throughout all the diversities of its mute 
and un'ionscious materialism ; and that to make 
o'lr alienated spirits again alive un*:o the Fatlief 



THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 37 

of them, calls for as distinct and as miraculous an 
exertion of the Divinity, as would need to be put 
lorth in the act of turning stones into the children 
of Abraham. Conceive this to be done then — . 
and that a quickening and a realizing sense of the 
Deity pervaded all the men of our species — and 
that each knew how to refer his own endowments, 
with an adequate expression of gratitude to the 
unseen author of them — from whom, we ask, of 
all these various individuals, should we look for the 
halleluiahs of devoutest ecstasy ? Would it not 
be from him whom God had arrayed in the splen- 
dour of nature's brightest accomplishments ? 
Would it not be from him, with whose eonstitutional 
feelings the movements of honour and benevolence 
were in fullest harmony ? Would it not be from 
him whom his Maker had cast into the happiest 
mould, and attempered into sweetest unison with 
all that was kind, and generous, and lovely, and 
ennobled by the loftiest emotions, and raised above 
his fellows into the finest spectacle of all that was 
graceful, and all that was manly ? Surely, if the 
possession of these moralities be just another theme 
of acknowledgment to the Lord of the spirits of 
all flesh, then, if the acknowledgment be withheld, 
and these moralities have taken up their residence 
in the bosom of him who is utterly devoid of piety, 
they go to aggravate the reproach of his ingrati- 
tude ; and to prove, that, of all the men upon earth 
who are far from God, he stands at the widest 
distance, l.e remains proof against the weightiest 
Claims, and he, of the dead in trespasses and sins. 



38 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

is the most profoundly asleep to the call of religion 
and to the supremacy of its righteous obligations. 

It is by argument such as this, that we would 
attempt to convince of sin those who have a 
righteousness that is without godliness ; and to 
prove, that, with the possession of such things as 
are pure, and lovely, and honest, and of good 
report, they in fact can only be admitted to recon- 
ciliation with God, on the same footing with the 
most worthless and profligate of the species ; and 
to demonstrate, that they are in the very same 
state of need and of nakedness, and are therefore 
children of wrath, even as others ; that it is only 
through faith in the preaching of the gospel of our 
Lord Jesus Christ that they can be saved ; and 
that, unless brought down from the delusive 
eminency of their own conscious attainments, they 
take their forgiveness through the blood of the 
Redeemer, and their sanctification through the 
Spirit which is at His giving, they shall obtain no 
part in that inheritance which is incorruptible and 
undefiled, and which fadeth not away. 

But the gospel of Jesus Christ does something 
more than hold out a refuge to the guilty. It 
takes all those who accept of its overtures under 
its supreme and exclusive direction. It keeps by 
them in the way of counsel, and exhortatioUj and 
constant superintendence. The grace which it 
reveals, is a grace which not merely saves all men, 
but which teaches all men. He who is the pro- 
posed Saviour, also claims to be the alone master 
of those who put their trust in Him. His coguiz- 



THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 39 

a,nce extends itself over the whole line of their 
history ; and there is not an affection of their heart, 
or a deed of their visible conduct, over which He 
does not assert the right of an authority that ia 
above all control, and that refuses all rivalship. 

Now, we want to point attention to a distinction 
which obtains between one set and another set ot 
His requirements. By the former, we are enjoined 
to practise certain virtues, which, separately from 
His injunction altogether, are in great demand, and 
in great reverence, amongst the members of society 
—such as compassion, and generosity, and justice, 
and truth ; which, independently of the religious 
sanction they obtain from the law of the Saviour, 
are in themselves so lovely, and so honourable, 
and of such good report, that they are ever sure to 
carry general applause along with them, and thus 
to combine both the characteristics of our text — 
that he who in these things serveth Christ, ig both 
acceptable to God, and approved of men. 

But there is another set of requirements, where 
the will of God, instead of being seconded by the 
applause of men, is utterly at variance with it. 
There are some who can admire the generous 
sacrifices that are made to truth or to friendship, 
but who, without one opposing scruple, abandon 
themselves to all the excesses of riot and festivity, 
and are therefore the last to admire the puritanic 
sobriety of him whom they cannot tempt to put his 
chastity or his temperance away from him ; though 
the same God, who bids us lie not one to another, 
also bids us keep the body under subjection, and 
to abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the 



40 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

£•01)1. Again, there are some in whose eyes an 
unviriated deUcacy looks a beauteous and an inter- 
esting spectacle, and an undeviating self-control 
looks a manly and respectable accomplishment; 
but wh6 have no taste in themselves, and no 
admiration in others, for the more direct exercises 
of religion ; and viho positively hate ,the strict and 
unbending preciseness of those who join in every 
ordinance, and on every returning night celebrate 
the praises of God in their family; and that, though 
the heavenly Lawgiver, who tells us to live right- 
eously and soberly, tells us also to live godly in the 
present evil world. And lastly, there are some 
who have not merely a toleration, but a liking for 
all the decencies of an established observation ; but 
who, with the homage they pay to sabbaths and to 
sacraments, nauseate the Christian principle in the 
supreme and regenerating vitality of its influences ; 
who, under a general religiousness of aspect, are 
still in fact the children of the world — and therefore 
hate the children of light in all that is peculiar and 
essentially characteristic of that high designation ; 
who understand not what is meant by having our 
conversation in heaven : and utter strangers to the 
separated walk, and the spiritual exercises, and the 
humble devotedness, and the consecrated affections, 
of the new creature in Jesus Christ, shrink from 
them altogether as from the extravagancies of a 
fanaticism in which they have no share, and with 
vhich they can have no sympathy — and all this, 
though the same scripture which prescribes the 
exercises of household and of public religion, lays 
claim to an undivided authority over all the desir^a 



THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 4 I 

and affections of the soul; and will admit of no 
compromise between God and the world ; and 
insists upon an utter deadness to the one, and a 
most vehement sensibilit,v to the other ; and elevates 
the standard of loyalty to the Father of our Spirits, 
to the lofty pitch of loving Him with all our 
strength, and of doing all things to His glory. 

Let the&e examples serve to impress a real and 
experimental distinction which obtains between 
two sets of virtues ; between those which possess 
the single ingredient of being approved by God, 
while they want the ingredient of being also accept 
able unto men — and those which possess both these 
ingredients, and to the observance of which, there- 
fore, we may be carried by a regard to the will of 
God, without any reference to the opinion of men 
— or by a regard to the opinion of men, without 
any reference to the will of God. Among the 
first class of virtues we would assign a foremost 
place to all those inward and spiritual graces 
which enter into the obedience of the affec- 
tions — hi-ghly approved of God, but noc at all 
acceptable to the general taste, or carrying along 
with them the general congeniality of the world. 
And then, though they do not possess the ingre- 
dient of God's approbation in a way so separate 
and unmixed, we would say, that abstinence from 
profane language, and attendance upon church, 
and a strict keeping of the sabbath, and the 
exercises of family worship, and the more rigid 
degrees of sobriety, and a fearful avoidance of 
every encroachment on temperance or chastity, 
rank more appropriately with the first than with 



42 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

tne second class of virtuet> ; tor tnough there "n« 
manv in society who nave no religion, and yet to 
wnom several of these virtues are acceptable, yet 
we must allow, that they do not convey such a 
universal popularity along with them, as certaui 
other virtues which belong indisputably to the 
second class. These are the virtues which have 
a more obvious and immediate bearing on the 
interest of society — such as the truth which is 
punctual to all its engagements, and the honour 
which never disappoints the confidence it has 
inspired, and the compassion which cannot look 
unmoved at any of the symptoms of human 
wretchedness, and the generosity which scatters 
unsparingly around it. These are virtues which 
God has enjoined, and in behalf of which man lifts 
the testimony of a loud and ready admiration — 
virtues in which there is a meeting and a combining 
of both the properties of our text ; so that he who 
in these things serveth Christ, is both approved of 
God, and acceptable unto men. 

Let a steady hold be kept of this distinction, 
and it will be found capable of being turned to 
a very useful application, both to the object of 
iuustrating principle, and to the important object 
of detecting character. For this purpose, let us 
carry the distinction along with us, and make it 
suoservient to the estabhsnment of two or three 
successive observations. 

First. A man may possess, to a considerable 
extent, the second class or virtues, and not possess 
so mucn as one loia or tne religious principle : and 
tnai, among otner reasons, because a man may feei 



THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 43 

a value for one of the attributes which belongs ta 
this class of virtues, and have no value whatever 
for the other attribute. If justice be both ap- 
proved by God, and acceptable to men, he may, 
on the latter property alone, be induced to the 
strictest maintenance of this virtue — and that 
without suffering its former property to have any 
practical influence whatever on any of his habits, 
or any of his determinations : and the same with 
every other virtue belonging to this second class. 
As residing in his character, there may not be the 
ingredient of godliness in any one of them. He 
may be well reported on account of them by men ; 
but with God he msij lie under as fearful a severity 
of reckoning, as if he wanted them altogether. 
Surely, it does not go to alleviate the withdraw- 
ment of your homage from God, , that you have 
such an homage to the opinion of men, as influences 
you to do things, to the doing of which the law of 
God is not able to influence you. It cannot be 
said to palliate the revolting of your inclinations 
from the Creator, that you have transferred them 
all to the creature ; and given an ascendancy to 
the voice of human reputation, which you have 
refused to the voice and authority of your Lawgiver 
in heaven. Your want of subordination to Him 
is surely not made up by the respectful subordina- 
tion that you render to the taste or the judgment 
of society. And in addition to this, we would 
have you to remember, that though other constitu- 
tional principles, besides a regard to the opinion of 
others, helped to form the virtues of the second 
class upon your character ; though compassion, 



44 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

and generosity, and truth, would have broken out 
into full and flourishing display upon you, and that, 
just because you had a native sensibility, or a native 
love of rectitude ; yet, if the first ingredient be 
wanting, if a regard to the approbation of God 
have no share in the production of the moral ac- 
complishment — then all the morality you can 
pretend to, is of as little religious estimation, and 
is as utterly disconnected with the rewards of 
religion, as all the elegance of taste you can pretend 
to, or all the raptured love of music you can 
pretend to, or all the vigour and dexterity of bodily 
exercise you can pretend to. All these, in refer- 
ence to the great question of immortality, profit but 
little ; and it is godliness alone that is profitable 
unto all things. It is upon this consideration that 
we would have you to open your eyes to the naked- 
ness of your condition in the sight of God ; to look 
to the full weigiit of the charge that He may prefei 
against you ; to estimate the fearful extent of the 
deficiency under which you labour ; to resist the 
delusive whispering of peace, when there is no 
peace ; and to understand, that the wrath of God 
abideth on every child of nature, however rich he 
may be in the virtues and accomplishments of nature. 
But again. This view of the distinction between 
the two sets of virtues, will serve to explain how 
it is, that, in the act of turning unto God, the one 
class of them appears to gather more copiously, 
and more conspicuously, upon the front of a 
renewed character, than the other class; how it is, 
that the former wear a more unequivocal aspect of 
religiousness than the latter ; bow it is, that an air 



THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 45 

of gravity, ard decency, and r.eriousness, looks to 
be more in alliance with sanctity, than the air 
either of open integrity, or of smiling benevolence* 
how it is, that the most ostensible change in the 
habit of a converted profligate, is that change in 
virtue of which he withdraws himself from the 
companions of his licentiousness ; and that to 
renounce the dissipations of his former life, stands 
far more frequently, or, at least, far more visibly, 
associated with the act of putting on Christianity; 
than to renounce the dishonesties of his former life 
It is true, that, by the law of the gospel, he is laid 
as strictly under the authority of the command- 
ment to live righteously, as of the commandment 
to live soberly. But there is a compound character 
in those virtues which are merely social ; and the 
presence of the one ingredient serves to throw into 
the shade, or to disguise altogether, the presence 
of the other ingredient. There is a greater number 
of irreligious men, who are at the same time just 
in their dealings, than there is of irreligious men, 
who are at the same time pure and temperate in 
their habits ; and therefore it is, that justice, even 
the most scrupulous, is not so specifical, and, of 
course, not so satisfying a mark of religion, as is a 
sobriety that is rigid and unviolable. And all this 
helps to explain how it is, that when a man comes 
under the power of religion, to abandon the levities 
of his past conduct is an event which stands far 
more noticeably out upon him, at this stage of his 
justory, than to abandon the iniquities of his past 
conduct ; that the most characteristic transforma- 
tion which takes place at such a time, is a trans- 



46 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

formation from thoughtlessness, and from licentious 
gaiety, and from the festive indulgencies of those 
with whom he wont to run to all those excesses of 
riot, of which the Apostle says, that they which 
do these things shall not inherit the kingdom of 
God : for even then, and in the very midst of all 
his impiety, he may have been kind-hearted, and 
there might be no room upon his person for a 
visible transformation from inhumanity of charac- 
ter ; even then, he may have been honourable, and 
there might be as little room for a visible transfor- 
mation from fraudulency of character. 

Thirdly. Nothing is more obvious than the 
antipathy that is felt by a certain class of religion- 
ists against the preaching of good works ; and the 
antipathy is assuredly well and warrantably 
grounded, when it is such a preaching as goes to 
reduce the importance, or to infringe upon the 
simplicity, of the great doctrine of justification by 
faith. But along with this, may there not be 
remarked the toleration with which they will listen 
to a discourse upon one set of good works, and 
the evident coldness and dislike with which they 
listen to a discourse on another set of them ; how 
a pointed remonstrance against sabbath breaking 
sounds in their ears, as if more in character from 
the pulpit, than a pointed remonstrance against 
the commission of theft, or the speaking of evil ; 
how an eulogium on the observance of family 
worship feels, in their taste, to be more impregna- 
ted with the spirit of sacredness, than an eulogium 
on the virtues of the shop, or of the market-place, 
and that, while the one is approven of as having 



THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 47 

about it the solemn and the suitable eharacteristins 
of godlines?, the other is stigmatized as a piece oi 
barren, heartless, heathenish, and philosophic 
morality ? Now, this antipathy to the preaching 
of the latter species of good works has something 
peculiar in it. It is not enough to say, that it 
arises from a sensitive alarm about the stability of 
the doctrine of justification; for let it be observed, 
that this doctrine stands opposed to the merit not 
of one particular class of performances, but to the 
merit of all performances whatsoever. It is just 
as unscriptural a detraction from the great truth 
of salvation by faith, to rest our acceptance with 
God on the duties of prayer, or of rigid sabbath 
keeping, or of strict and untainted sobriety, as to 
rest it on the punctual fulfilment of all our bar- 
gains, and on the extent of our manifold liberalities. 
It is not, then, a mere zeal about the great article 
of justification which lies at the bottom of that 
peculiar aversion that is felt towards a sermon on 
some social or humane accomplishment ; and that 
i'S not felt towards a sermon on sober-mindedness, 
or a sermon on the observation of the sacrament, 
or a sermon on any of those performances which 
bear a more direct and exclusive reference to God. 
We shall find the explanation of this phenomenon, 
which often presents itself in the religious world, 
in that distinction of which we have Just required 
that it should be kept in steady hold, and followed 
into its various applications. The aversion in 
question is often, in fact, a well-founded aversion, 
to a topic, which, though religious in the matter 
of it, may, from the way in which It is proposed, 



48 TH£ INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

be altogether secular in the principle of it. It i» 
resistance to what is deemed, and justly deemed, 
an act of usurpation on the part of certain virtues, 
which, when unanimated by a sentiment of godli- 
ness, are entitled to no place whatever in the 
ministrations of the gospel of Christ. It proceeds 
from a most enlightened fear, lest that should be 
held to make up the whole of religion, which is in 
fact utterly devoid of the spirit of religion ; and 
from a trae and tender apprehension, lest, on the 
possession of certain accomplishments, which 
secure a fleeting credit throughout the little hour 
of this world's history, deluded man should look 
forward to his eternity with hope, and upward to 
his God with complacency — while he carries not 
on his forehead one vestige of the character of 
heaven, one lineament of the aspect of godliness. 

And lastly. The first class of virtues bear the 
character of religiousness more strongly, just 
because they bear that character more singly. 
The people who are without, might, no doubt, 
see in every real Christian the virtues of the 
second class also ; but these virtues do not belong 
to them peculiarly and exclusively. For though 
it be true, that every religious man must be 
honest, the converse does not follow, that every 
honest man must be religious. And it is because 
the social accomplishments do not form the specific, 
that neither do they form the most prominent and 
distinguishing marks of Christianity. They maj 
also be recognised as features in the character of 
men, who utterly repudiate the whole style and 
doctrine of the New 'lestament; and hence a very 



THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 49 

prevalent impression in society, that the faith of 
the gospel doea not bear so powerfully ana so 
directly on the relative virtues of human conduct. 
A few instances of hypocrisy amongst the more 
serious professors of our faith, serve to rivet the 
impression, and to give it perpetuity in the world. 
One single example, indeed, of sanctimonious 
duplicity, will suffice, in the judgment of many, to 
cover the whole of vital and orthodox Christianity 
with disgrace. The report of it vi^ill be borne in 
triumph amongst the companies of the irreligious. 
The man who pays no homage to sabbaths or to 
sacraments, will be contrasted in the open, liberal, 
and manly style, of all his transactions, with the 
low cunning of this drivelling methodistical pre- 
tender; and the loud laugh of a multitude of 
scorners, will give a force and a swell to this 
public outcry against the whole character of the 
sainthood. 

Now, this delusion on the part of the unbeliev- 
mg world is very natural, and ought not to excite 
our astonishment. We are not surprised, from 
the reasons already adverted to, that the truth, 
and the justice, and the humanity, and the moral 
ioveiiress, which do in fact belong to every new 
creature in Jesus Christ our Lord, should miss 
their observation; or, at least, fail to be recognised 
among the other more obvious characteristics into 
which believers have been translated by the faith 
of the gospel. But, on this very subject, there is 
a tendency to delusion on the part of the disciples' 
ot the faith. They need to be reminded of the 
Bo'jeran and indispensable religiousness of Uua 

VOL. VI. c 



bo THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

aecond class of virtues. They need to be told, 
that though these vu-tues do possess the one 
ingredient of being approved by men, and may, on 
this single account, be found to reside in the 
characters of those who live without God — yet, 
that they also possess the other ingredient of being 
acceptable unto God ; and, on this latter account, 
should be made the subjects of their most strenu- 
ous cultivation. They must not lose sight of the 
one ingredient in the other ; or stigmatize, as so 
many fruitless and insignificant moralities, those 
virtues which enter as component parts into the 
service of Christ ; so that he who in these things 
serveth Christ, is both acceptable to God, and 
approved by men. They must not expend all 
their warmth on the high and peculiar doctrines of 
the New Testament, while they offer a cold and 
reluctant admission to the practical duties of the 
New Testament. The Apostle has bound the 
one to the other by a tie of immediate connexion. 
Wherefore, lie not one to another, as ye have put 
off the old man and his deeds, and put on the new- 
man, which is formed after the image of God, in 
righteousness and true holiness. Here the very 
obvious and popular accomplishment of truth is 
grafted on the very peculiar doctrine of regenera- 
tion : and we altogether mistake the kind of 
transforming influence which the faith of the gos- 
pel brings along with it, if we think that upright- 
ness of character does not emerge at the same 
time with godliness of character ; or that the 
virtues of society do not form upon the believer 
mto as rich and varied an assemblage, as do tba 



THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. bl 

virtues of the sanctuary, or that, while he puts on 
those graces which are singly acceptable to God, 
he falls behind in any of those graces which are 
both acceptable to God, and approved of men. 

Let, therefore, every pretender to Christianity 
vindicate this assertion by his own personal his ■ 
tory in the world. Let him not lay his godliness 
aside, when he is done with the morning devotion 
of his family : but carry it abroad with him, and 
make it his companion and his guide through the 
whole business of the day ; always bearing in his 
heart the sentiment, that thou God seest me ; and 
remembering, that there is not one hour that can 
flow, or one occasion that can cast up, where His 
law is not present with some imperious exaction or 
other. It is false, that the principle of Christian 
sanctification possesses no influence over the 
familiarities of civil and ordinary life. It is 
altogether false, that godliness is a virtue of such 
a lofty and monastic order, as to hold its dominion 
only over the solemnities of worship, or over the 
solitudes of prayer and spiritual contemplation. If 
it be substantially a grace within us at all, it will 
give a direction and a colour to the whole of our 
path in society. There is not one conceivable 
transaction, amongst all the manifold varieties of 
human employment, which it is not fitted to animate 
by its spirit. There is nothing that meets us too 
homely, to be beyond the reach of obtaining, from 
its influence, the stamp of something celestial. It 
offers to take the whole man under its ascendancy, 
and to subordinate all his movements : nor does it 
hold the place which rightfully belongs to it, till it 



52 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANIXy. 

be vested with a presiding authority over the entira 
system of human affairs. And therefore it is, that 
the preacher is not bringing down Christianity — ► 
he is only sending it abroad over the Held of it» 
legitimate operation^ when he goes with it to your 
counting-houses, and there rebukes every selfish 
idiclination that would carry you ever so little withini 
the hmits of fraudulency; when he enters into your 
chambers of agency, and there detects the character 
of falsehood, which lurks under all the plausibility 
of your multiplied and excessive charges ; when he 
repairs to the crowded market-place, and pronounces 
of every bargain, over which truth, in: all the 
strictness of quakerism, has not presided^ that it is 
tainted with moral evil ; when lie looks into your 
shops, and, i,n listening to the contest of aa'guraeut 
between him v,'ho magnifies his article, and him 
who pretends to undervalue it,, he calls it the con- 
test of avarice, broken loose from the restraints of 
integrity. He is not, by all this, vulgarizing reli- 
gion, or giving it the hue and the character of 
earthliness. He is only asserting the might and 
the universality of its sole pre-eminence over man. 
And therefore it is, that if possible to solemnize 
his hearers to the practice of simplicity and godly 
sincerity in their dealings, he would try to make 
the odiousness of sin stand visibly out on every 
shade and modification of dishonesty j and tf 
assure them, that if there be a pUice in our world, 
where the subtle evasion, and the dexterous ImpoEH' 
tion, and the sly but gainful concealment, and thtf 
report which misleads an inquirer, and the glosS: 
which tempts the unwary purchaser — are not only 



THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY, 53 

currently practised in the walks of merchandise, 
but, when not carried forward to the glare and the 
literality of falsehood, are beheld with general 
connivance ; if there be a place where the sense oi 
morality has thus fallen, and all the nicer delicacies 
of conscience are overborne in the keen and ambitious 
rivalry of men hastening to be rich, and wholly 
given over to the idolatrous service of the God of 
this world — then that is the place, the smoke of 
whose iniquity rises before Him who sitteth on the 
throne, in a tide of deepest and most revoltmg 
abomination. 

And here we have to complain of the public 
injustice that is done to Christianity, when one of 
its ostentatious professors has acted the hypocrite, 
and stands in disgraceful exposure before the eyes 
of the world. We advert to the readiness with 
which this is turned into a matter of general 
impeachment, against every appearance of serious- 
ness ; and how loud the exclamation is against the 
religion of all who signalize themselves ; and that, 
if the aspect of godliness be so very decided as to 
become an aspect of peculiarity, then is this 
peculiarity converted into a ground of distrust and 
suspicion against the bearer of it. Now, it so 
happens, that, in the midst of this world lying in 
wickedness, a man, to be a Christian at all, must 
signalize himself. Neither is he in a way of 
salvation, unless he be one of a very peculiar 
people ; nor would we pi-ecipitatcly consign him to 
discredit, even though the peculiarity be so very 
glaring as to provoke the charge of methodism. 
But, instead of making one man's hypocrisy act as 



04 run influence of chrismanity. 

a drawback upon the reputation of a thousand, we 
submit, if it would not be a fairer and more philo- 
sopiiical procedure, just to betalie one's-self to the 
method of induction — to make a walking surve) 
over the town, and record an inventory of all the 
men in it who are so very far gone as to have the 
voice of psalms in their family ; or as to attend the 
meetings of fellowship for prayer ; or as scrupu- 
lously to abstain from all that is questionable in 
the amusements of the world ; or as, by any other 
marked and visible symptom whatever, to stand 
out to general observation as the members of a 
saintly and separated society. We know, that 
even of such there are a few, who, if Paul were 
alive, would move him to weep for the reproach 
they bring upon His master. But we also know, 
that the blind and impetuous world exaggerates 
the few into the many ; inverts the process o. 
atonement altogether, by laying the sins of one 
man, upon the multitude; looks at their general 
aspect of sanctity, and is so engrossed with this 
single expression of character, as to be insensible 
to the noble uprightness, and the tender humanity, 
with which this sanctity is associated. And there- 
fore it is, that we offer the assertion, and challenge 
all to its most thorough and searching investigation, 
that the Christianity of these people, which many 
think does nothing but cant, and profess, and run 
after ordinances, has augmented their honesties 
and their liberalities, and that, tenfold beyond the 
average character of society ; that these are the 
men we oftenest meet with in the mansions of 
poverty — and who look with the most wakeful eyo 



I 



THE t^JFI.I'EXCK OF CHP!?T1 AN'ITT, 55 

over 9}} t-b«- sufferings and necessities of our species 
— and who open their hand most widely in behalf 
of the imploring and the friendless — and to whom, 
in spite of all their mockery, the men of the world 
are sure, in the negotiations of business, to award 
the readiest confidence — and who sustain the most 
splendid part in all those great movements of 
philanthropy which bear on the general interests 
of mankind — and who, with their eye full upon 
eternity, scatter the most abundant blessings over 
the fleeting pilgrimage of time — and who, while 
they hold their conversation in heaven, do most 
enrich the earth we tread upon, with all those 
virtues which secure enjoyment to families, and 
uphold the order and prosperity of the oomrooii* 
vtudths 



56 THE POWER OF SELFISHNESS. 



DISCOURSE III. 

THE POWER OF SELFISHNESS IN PROMOTING 
THE HONESTIES OF MERCANTILE INTER- 
COURSE. 



" And if you do good to them which do good to you, whaA 
thank hare ye? for sinners also do even the eanie.**-^ 
LoKE vi. 33. 

It is to be remarked of many of those duties, the 
performance of which confers the least distinction 
npon an individual, that they are at the same time 
the very duties, the violation of which would confer 
upon him the largest measure of obloquy and 
disgrace. Truth and justice do not serve to elevate 
a man so highly above the average morality of his 
species, as would generosity, or ardent friendship, 
or devoted and disinterested patriotism. The formel 
are greatly more common than the latter ; and, on 
that account, the presence of them is not so calcu- 
lated to signalize the individual to wliom they 
belong. But that is one account, also, why the 
absence of them would make him a more monstrous 
exception to the general run of character in society. 
And, accordingly, while it is true, that there are 
more men of integrity in the world, than there are 
men of very wide and liberal beneficence — it is also 
true, that one act of falsehood, or one act of 
dishonesty, would stamp a far more burning infamy 
on the name of a transgressor, than any defect in 



THE POWER OF SELTISHNESS. 57 

those more heroic charities, and extraordinary 
virtues, of which humanity is capable. 

So it is far more disgraceful not to be just to 
another, than not to be kind to him ; and, at the 
same time, an act of kindness may be held in higher 
positive estimation than an act of justice. The 
one is my right — nor is there any call for the 
homage of a particular testimony when it is ren- 
dered. The other is additional to my right — the 
offering of a spontaneous good will, which I had 
no title to exact; and which, therefore, when 
rendered to me, excites in my bosom the cordiality 
of a warmer acknowledgment. And yet, our Savi- 
our, who knew what was in man, saw, that much 
of the apparent kindness of nature, was resolvible 
into the real selfishness of nature ; that much of 
the good done unto others, was done in the hope 
that these others would do something again. And, 
we believe, it would be found by an able analyst 
of the human character, that this was the secret 
but substantial principle of many of the civilities 
and hospitahties of ordinary intercourse — that if 
there were no expectation either of a return in 
kind, or of a return in gratitude, or of a return in 
popularity, many of the sweetening and cementing 
virtues of a neighbourhood would be practically 
done away — all serving to prove, that a multitude 
of virtues, which, in effect, promoted the comfort 
and the interest of others, were tainted in principle 
by a latent regard to one's own interest ; and that 
thus being the fellowship of those who did good, 
either as a return for the good done unto them, or 
who did good in hope of such a return, it might be, 
c 2 



58 THE POWER OF SELFISHNESS. 

in fact, what our Saviour characterizes it in the 
text — the fellowship of sinners. 

But if to do that which is unjust, is still more 
disgraceful than not to do that which is kind, it 
would prove all the more strikingly how deeply sin 
had tainted the moral constitution of our species — • 
could it be shown, that the great practical restraint 
on the prevalence of this more disgraceful thing iu 
society, is the tie of that common selfishness which 
actuates and characterizes all its members. It were 
a curious but important question, were it capable 
of being resolved — if men did not feel it their 
interest to be honest, how much of the actual 
doings of honesty would still be kept up in the 
world ? It is our own opinion of the nature of man, 
that it has its honourable feelings, and its instinctive 
principles of rectitude, and its constitutional love 
of truth and of integrity ; and that, on the basis of 
these, a certain portion of uprightness would remain 
amongst us, without the aid of any prudence, or 
any calculation whatever. All this we have fully 
conceded ; and have already attempted to demon- 
strate, that, in spite of it, the character of man is 
thoroughly pervaded by the very essence of sinful- 
ness ; because, with all the native virtues which 
adorn it, there adheres to it that foulest of all 
spiritual deformities — unconcern about God, and 
even antipathy to God. It has been argued against 
the orthodox doctrine of the universality of human 
corruption, that even without the sphere of the 
operation of the gospel, there do occur so many 
engaging specimens of worth and benevolence in 
society. The reply is, that this may be no deduo- 



THE POWER OF SELFISHNESS. 59 

tion from the doctrine whatever, but be even an 
aggravation of it — should the very n.en who 
exemphfy so much of what is amiable, carr) in their 
hearts an indifference to the will of that Being who 
thus hath formed, and thus hath embellished them. 
But it would be a heavy deduction indeed, not from 
the doctrine, but from its hostile and imposing 
argument, could it be shown, that the vast majority 
of all equitable dealing amongst men, is performed, 
not on the principle of honour at all, but on the 
principle of selfishness — that this is the soil upon 
which the honesty of the world mainly flourishes, 
and is sustained; that, were the connexion dissolved 
))etween justice to others and our own particular 
advantage, this would go very far to banish the 
observation of justice from the earth; that, generally 
speaking, men are honest, not because thev are 
lovers of God, and not even because they are lovers 
of virtue, but because they are lovers of their own 
selves — insomuch, that if it were possible to disjoin 
the good of self altogether from the habit of doing 
what was fair, as well as from the habit of doing 
what was kind to the people around us, this would 
not merely isolate the children of men from each 
other, in respect of the obligations of beneficence, 
but it would arm them into an undisguised hostility 
against each other, in respect of their rights. The 
mere disinterested principle would set up a feeble 
barrier, indeed, against adesolating tide of selfishness, 
now set loose from the consideration of its own 
advantage. The genuine depravity of the human 
heart would burst forth and show itself in its true 
characters : and the world in which we live be 



60 THE POWER OF SELFISHNESS. 

transformed into a scene of unblushing fraud, of 
open and lawless depredation. 

And, perhaps, after all, the best way of arriving 
practically at the solution of this question would 
be, not by a formal induction of particular cases, 
but by committing the matter to the gross and 
general experience of those who are most conver- 
sant in the affairs of business. There is a sort of 
undefinable impression that all have upon this 
subject, on the justness of which, however, we are 
disposed to lay a very considerable stress — an 
impression gathered out of the mass of the recol- 
lections of a whole life — an impression founded on 
what we may have observed in the history of our 
own doings — a kind of tact that we have acquired 
as the fruit of our repeated intercourse with men, 
and of the manifold transactions that we have had 
with them, and of the number of times in which 
we have been personally implicated with the play 
of human passions, and human interests. It is 
our own convictien, that a well exercised merchant 
could cast a more intelligent glance at this question, 
than a well exercised metaphysician ; and thei efore 
do we submit its decision to those of them who 
have hazarded most largely, and most frequently, 
on the faith of agents, and customers, and distant 
correspondents. We know the fact of a very 
secure and well warranted confidence in the honesty 
of others, being widely prevalent amongst men ; 
and that, were it not for this, all the interchanges 
of trade would be suspended ; and that confidence 
is the very soul and life of commercial activity; 
and it is delightful to think, how thus a man can 



THE POWER OF SELFISHNESS. 61 

suffer all the wealth which belongs to him to depart 
from under his eye, and to traverse the mightiest 
oceans and continents of our world, and to pass 
into the custody of men whom he never saw 
And it is a sublime homage, one should think, to 
the honourable and high-minded principles of our 
nature, that, under their guardianship, the adverse 
hemispheres of the globe should be bound together 
in safe and profitable merchandise ; and that thus 
one should sleep with a bosom undisturbed by 
jealousy, in Britain, who has all, and more than ail 
his property treasured in the warehouses of India 
— and that, just because there he knows there is 
vigilance to defend it, and activity to dispose of it, 
and truth to account for it, and all those trusty 
virtues which ennoble the character of man to 
shield it from injury, and send it back again in an 
increasing tide of opulence to his door. 

There is no question, then, as to the fact of a 
very extended practical honesty, between man and 
man, in their intercourse with each other. The 
only question is, as to the reason of the fact. Why 
is it, that he whom we have trusted acquits him- 
self of his trust with such correctness and fidelity ? 
Whether is his mind, in so doing, most set upon 
our interest or upon his own ? Whether is it 
because he seeks our advantage in it, or because 
he finds in it his own advantage ? Tell us to 
which of the two concerns he is most tremblingly 
alive — to our property, or to his own character ? 
»nd whether, upon the last of these feelings, he 
may not be more forcibly impelled to equitable 
dealing than upon the first of them ? We well 



62 THE POWER OF SELFISHNESS. 

know, that there is room enough in his bosom fof 
both ; but to determine how powerfully seifishnes8 
io blended with the punctualities and the integritiea 
of business, let us ask those who can speak most 
soundly and experimentally on the subject, what 
would be the result, if the element of selfishness 
were so detached from the operations of trade, 
that there was no such thing as a man suffering in 
his prosperity, because he suffered in his good 
name ; that there was no such thing as a desertion 
of custom and employment coming upon the back 
of a blasted credit, and a tainted reputation ; in a 
word, if the only security we had of man was his 
principles, and that his interest flourished and 
augmented just as surely without his principles as 
with them ? Tell us, if ; he hold we have of a man's 
own personal advantage were thus broken down, 
ii) how far the virtues of the mercantile world 
would survive it ? Would not the world of trade 
sustain as violent a derangement on this mighty 
liold being cut asunder, as the world of nature 
would on the suspending of the law of gravitation ? 
Would not the whole system, in fact, fall to pieces, 
and be dissolved ? Would not men, when thus 
released from the magical chain of their own 
interest, which bound them together into a fair and 
seeming compact of principle, like dogs of rapine, 
let loose upon their prey, overleap the bariier 
which formerly restrained them ? Does not tlijg 
prove, that selfishness, after all, is tne grand prin- 
ciple on which the brotherhood of the human race 
is made to hang together ; and tnat he who can 
UiHKe the wratii of man to praise nim, has also upon 



THE POWER OF SELFISHNESS. 63 

the selfisslmess ot man, caused a most beauteous 
order of wide and useful mtercourse to be suspended ? 
But let us here stop to observe, that, while 
there is much in this contemplation to magnify the 
wisdom of the Supreme Contriver, there is also 
much in it to humble man, and to convict him of 
the deceitfulness of that moral complacency with 
which he looks to his own character, and his own 
attainments. There is much in it to demonstrate, 
that his righteousness are as filthy rags ; and that 
the idolatry of self, however hidden in its opera-« 
tion, may be detected in almost every one of them. 
God may combine the separate interests of ever}- 
individual of the human race, and the strenuous 
prosecution of these interests by each of them, 
into an harmonious system of operation, for the 
good of one great and extended family. But if, 
on estimating the character of each individual 
member of that family, we shall find, that the main- 
spring of his actions is the urgency of a selfish , 
inclination ; and that to this his very virtues are 
subordinate ; and that even the honesties which 
mark his conduct are chiefly, though perhaps 
insensibly, due to the selfishness which actuates 
and occupies his whole heart ; — then, let the sem- 
blance be what it may, still the reality of the case 
accords with the most mortifying representations 
of the New Testament. The moralities of nature 
are but the moralities of a day, and will cease to 
be applauded when this world, the only theatre of 
their applause, is burnt up. They are but the 
blossoms of that rank efflorescence which is 
ntiurished on the soil of human corruption, and caa 



j64 the power of selfishness. 

never bring forth fruit unto immortality. Th« 
discerner of all secrets sees that ttiey emanate 
from a principle wluch is at utter war with the 
charity that prepares for the enjoyments, and that 
glows in the bosoms of the celestial ; and, therefore, 
though highly esteemed among men, they may be 
in his sight an abomination. 

Let us, if possible, make this still clearer to the 
apprehension, by descending more minutely into 
particulars. There is not one member of the 
great mercantile family, with whom there does not 
obtain a reciprocal interest between himself and 
all those who compose the circle of his various 
correspondents. He does them good ; but his 
eye is all the while open to the expectation of 
their doing him something again. They minister 
to him all the profits of his employment ; but not 
unless he minister to them of his service, and 
attention, and fidelity. Insomuch, that if his 
credit abandon him, his prosperity will also 
abandon him. If he forfeit the confidence of others, 
he will also forfeit their custom along with it. So 
that, in perfect consistency with interest being the 
reigning idol of his soul, he may still be, in every 
way, as sensitive of encroachment upon his reputa- 
tion, as he would be of encroachment upon his pro- 
perty ; and be as vigilant, to the full, in guarding 
his name against the breath of calumny, or suspi- 
cion, as in guarding his estate against the inroads 
of a depredator. Now, this tie of reciprocity, 
which binds him. into fellowship and good faith 
n'ith society at large, will sometimes, in the mere 
course of business, and its unlooked-for fluctu 



THE POWER OT SELFISHNESt. 65 

ations, draw one or two individuals into a still 
more special intimacy with himself. There may 
be a lucrative partnership, in which it is the 
pressing necessity of each individual, that all of 
them, for a time at least, stick closely and steadily 
together. Or there may be a thriving interchange 
of commodities struck out, where it is the mutual 
interest of all who are concerned, that each take 
his assigned part and adhere to it Or there may 
be a promising arrangement devised, which it 
peeds concert and understanding to effectuate ; 
.^nd, for which purpose, several may enter into a 
skilful and well ordered combination. We are 
neither saying that this is very general in the mer- 
cantile world, or that it is in the slightest degree 
unfair. But all must be sensible, that, amid the 
reelings and movements of the great trading society, 
the phenomenon sometimes offers itself of a groupe 
jof individuals who have entered' into some com- 
pact of mutual accommodation, and wbo, therefore, 
look as if they were isolated from the rest by the 
bond of some more strict and separate alliance. 
All we aim at, is to gather illustration to our 
principle, out of the way in which the members of 
this associated cluster conduct themselves to each 
other; how such a cordiality may pass between 
them, as, one could suppose, to be the cordiality 
of genuine friendship ; how such an intercourse 
n'.ight be maintained among their families, as 
might look like the intercourse of unmingled affec- 
tion ; how such an exuberance of mutual hospitality 
might be poured forth, as to recall those poetic 
jiays vv.hen avai'ice was unknown, and men lived 



66 THE POWER OF SELFISHNESS. 

in harmony together on the fruits of one commor 
mheritance ; and how nobly disdainful each member 
of the combination appeared to be of such little 
savings, as could be easily surrendered to the 
general good and adjustment of the whole concern. 
And all tins, it will be observed, so long as the con- 
cern prospered, and it was for the interest of each 
to abide by it ; and the respective accounts current 
gladdened the heart of every individual, by the 
exhibition of an abundant share of the common 
benefit to himself. But then, every such system 
of operations comes to an end. And what we ask 
is, if it be at all an unlikely evolution of our nature, 
that the selfishness whicli lay in wrapt conceal- 
ment, during the progress of these transactions, 
should now come forward and put out to view its 
cloven foot, when they draw to their termination ? 
And as the tie of reciprocity gets looser, is it not 
a very possible tiling, that the murmurs of some- 
thing like unfair or unhandsome conduct should 
get louder ? And that a fellowship, hitherto 
carried forward in smiles, should break up in 
reproaches ? And that the Avhole character of 
this fellowship should show itself more unequi- 
vocally as it comes nearer to its close ? And that 
some of its members, as they are becoming dis- 
engaged from the bond of mutual interest, should 
also become disengaged from the bond of those 
mutual delicacies and proprieties, and even 
honesties, which had heretofore marked the whole 
of their intercourse ? — Insomuch, that a matter ia 
which all the parties looked so fair, and magna- 
nimous, and liberal, might at length degenerate 



THE POWER OF SELFISHNESS. 67 

into a contest of keen appropriation, a scramble o! 
downright and undisguised selfishness ? 

But though this may happen sometimes, we are 
far from saying that it will happen generally. It 
could not, in fact, without such an exposure of 
character, as might not merely bring a man down 
in the estimation of those from whom he is now 
withdrawing himself, but also in the estimation of 
that general public with whom he is still linked ; 
and on whose opinion of him there still rests the 
dependence of a strong personal interest. To 
estimate precisely the whole influence of this 
consideration, or the degree in which honesty of 
character is resolvible into selfishness of character, 
it would be necessary to suppose, that the tie of 
reciprocity was dissolved, not merely between the 
individual and those with whom he had been more 
particularly and more intimately associated — but 
that the tie of reciprocity was dissolved between 
the individual and the whole of his former acquaints 
anceship in business. Now, the situation which 
comes nearest to this, is that of a man on the eve 
of bankruptcy, and with no sure hope of so retriev- 
ing his circumstances as again to emerge into 
credit, and be restored to some employment of gain 
or of confidence. If he have either honourable 
or religious feelings, then character, as connected 
with principle, may still, in his eyes, be something ; 
but character, as connected with prudence, or the 
calculations of interest, may now be nothing. In the 
dark hour of the desperation of his soul, he may feel, 
in fact, that he has nothing to lose: and let us now 
see how he will conduct himself, when thus released 



§$ THE TOWUU OF SKLnSHNESS. 

from thgf, check of reputation whicth formerly held 
him. In these circumstances, if you have ever 
seen the man abandon himself to utter regardless- 
ness of all the honesties which at one time adorned 
hira; and doing such disgraceful things as he would 
have spurned at the very suggestion of, vj the days 
of his prosperity ; and, forgetful of his former 
name, practising all possible shifts of duplicity to 
prolong the credit of a tottering establishment; 
and to keep himself afloat for a few months of 
torture and restk'Bsness, weaving such a web of 
entanglement around his many friends and com- 
panions, as shall most surely implicate some of 
them Ml his fall; and, as the crisis approaches, 
plying his petty wiles how to survive the coming 
ruin, and to gather up of its fragments to his 
family. O ! how much is tliere here to deplore ; 
and who can be so ungenerous as to stalk in unre- 
lenting triumph over the helplessness of so sad an 
overthrow ! But if ever such an exhibition meet 
your eye, while we ask you not to withhold your 
pity from the unfortunate, we ask you also to read 
in it a lesson of wortliless and sunken humanity ; 
how even its very virtues are tinctured with cor- 
ruption ; and that the honour, and the truth, and 
the equity, with which man proudly thinks his 
nature to be embellished, are often reared on the 
basis of selfishness, and lie prostrate in the dust 
when that basis is cut away. 

But other instances may be quoted, which go 
still more satisfactorily to prove the very extended 
influence of selfishness on the moral judgments of 
our species ; and how readily the estimate, wliich 



TBE POWER OF SELFISHNESS. 69 

a man forms on the question of right and wrong, 
accommodates itself to his own interest. There 
is a strong gener'al reciprocity of advantage between 
the government of a country and all its inhabitants. 
The one party, in this relation, renders a revenue 
for the expenses of the state. The other party 
renders back again protection from injustice and 
violence. Were the means furnished by the former 
withheld,^ the benefit conferred by the latter wouM 
cease to be administered. So that, with the* 
government, and the public at large, nothing can 
be more strict, and more indispensable, than the 
tie of reciprocity that is between them. But this; 
is not felt, and therefore not acted upon, by the 
separate individuals who compose that public. 
The reciprocity does not come home with a 
sufficiently pointed and personal application to 
each of them. Every man may calculate, that 
though he, on the strength of some dexterous 
Evasions, were to keep back of the tribute that is 
due by him, the mischief that would recoil upon 
himself is divided with the rest of his countrymen; 
and the portion of it which comes to his doo» 
would be so very small, as to be altogether 
insensible. To all feeling he will just be as eifec- 
tually sheltered, by the power and the justice of 
his country, whether he pay his taxes in full, or, 
under the guise of some skilful concealment, pay 
them but partially ; and, therefore, to every prac- 
tical effect, the tie of reciprocity, between him and 
his sovereign, is in a great measure dissolved. 
Now, what is the actual adjustment of the moral 
sense, and moral conduct, of the population, to 



70 THE POWER OF SELFISHNESS. 

this state of matters ? It is quite palpable. Sxih- 
tprfnires which, in private business, would be heW 
to be disgraceful, are not held to be so disgraceful 
in this department of a man's personal transactions. 
The cry of indignation, which would be lifted up 
against the falsehood or dishonesty of a man's 
dealings in his own neighbourhood, is mitigated or 
unheard, though, in his dealings with the state, 
tiiere should be the very same relaxation of princi- 
ple. On this subject, there is a connivance of 
popular feeling, which, if extended to the whole of 
human traffic, would banish all its securities from 
the world — giving reason to believe, that much of 
the good done among men, is done on the expecta- 
tion of a good that will be rendered back again ; 
and that many of the virtues, by which the fellow- 
ship of human beings is regulated and sustained, 
still leave the imputation unredeemed, of its being 
a fellowship of sinners ; and that both the practice 
of morality, and the demand for it, are measured 
by the operation of a self-love, which, so far from 
signalizing any man, or preparing him for eternity, 
he holds in common with the fiercest and most 
degenerate of his species; and that, apart from th« 
consideration of his own interest, simplicity and 
godly sincerity are, to a great degree, unknown ; 
insomuch, that though God has interposed with a 
law, of giving unto all their dues, and tribute to 
whom tribute is due, we may venture an affirma- 
tion of the vast majority of this tribute, that it is 
rendered for wrath s sake, and not for conscience' 
82ke. Of so Uttie effect is unsupported and 
Bolitary conscience to stem the tide of selfishness. 



THE POWER OF SELFISHNESS. 71 

And it is chiefly when honesty and truth go over* 
bearingly along with this tide, that the voice ol 
man is lifted up to acknowledge them, and his 
heart becomes feelingly alive to a sense of their 
obligations. 

And let us here just ask, in what relation of 
criminality does he who uses a contraband article 
stand to him who deals in it ? In precisely the 
same relation that a receiver of stolen goods stands 
to a thief or a depredator. There may be some 
who revolt at the idea of being so classified. But, 
if the habit we have just denounced can be 
fastened on men of rank and seemly reputation, 
let us just humble ourselves into the admission of 
how little the righteous practice of the world has 
the foundation of righteous principle to sustain it ; 
how feeble are the securities of rectitude, had it 
nothing to uphold it but its own native charms, 
and native obligations; how society is held together, 
only because the grace of God can turn to account 
the worthless propensities of the individuals who 
compose it ; and how, if the virtues of fidelity, and 
truth, and justice, had not the prop of selfishness 
to rest upon, they would, with the exception of a 
few scattered remnants, take their departure from 
the world, and leave it a prey to the anarchy of 
human passions — to the wild misrule of all those 
depravities which agitate and deform our ruined 
nature. 

The very same exhibition of our nature may be 
witnessed in almost every parish of our sister 
kingdom, where the people render a revenue to 
the minister of religion, and the minister renders 



#2 ln£ tOtVER OK SELFiSKNJiaa. 

back a^ahi a return, it is true — but not such tt 
return, as, in the estimation of gross and ordinary 
Selfishness, is at all deemed an equivalent for the 
sacrifice which has been made. In this instance, 
too, that law of reciprocity which reigns through- 
out the common transactions of merchandise, is 
altogether suspended ; and the consequence is, 
that the law of right is trampled into ashes. A 
tide of public odium runs against the men who are 
outraged of their property, and a smile of general 
connivance rewards the successful dexterity of the 
men who invade it. That portion of the annual 
produce of our soil, which, on a foundation of 
legitimacy as firm as the property of the soil itself, 
is allotted to a set of national functionaries — and 
which, but for them, would all have gone, in the 
shape of increased revenue, to the indolent pro- 
prietor, is altogether thrown loose from the 
guardianship of that great principle of reciprocity, 
on which we strongly suspect that the honesties 
of this world are mainly supported. The national 
clergy of England may be considered as standing 
out of the pale of this guardianship ; and the 
consequence is, that what is most rightfully and 
most sacredly theirs, is abandoned to the gambol 
of many thousand depredators ; and, in addition 
to a load of most unmerited obloquy, have they 
had to sustain all the heartburnings of known and 
lelt injustice ; and that intercourse between the 
teachers and the taught, which ought surely to be 
an intercourse of peace, and friendship, and right- 
eousness, is turned into a contest between the 
catural avarice of the one pa,rty, snd the naturaS 



THE POWER OF SELFISHNESS. 'S 

rt»sentraerits of the other. It is not that we wisli 
Ou: sister chureifl were swern away, ior we honestly 
ihmk, that the overthrow of that establishment 
Would be a severe blow to the Christianity of our 
.and. It is not that we envy that great hierarchy 
the splendour of her endowments — for better a 
dmner of herbs, when surrounded by the love of 
parishioners, than a preferment of stalled dignity, 
and strife therewith. It is not either that we look 
upon her ministers as having at all disgraced 
themselves by their rapacity ; for look to the 
amount of the encroachments that are made upon 
them, and we shall see that they have carried 
their privileges with the most exemplary forbear- 
ance and moderation. But, from these very 
encroachments do we infer how lawless a human 
being will become, when emancipated from the 
bond of his own interest ; how much such a state 
of things must multiply the temptations to injustice 
over the face of the country ; and how desirable, 
therefore, that it were put an end to — not by the 
abolition of that venerable church, but by a fair 
and liberal commutation of the revenues which 
support her — not by bringing any blight on the 
property of her ecclesiastics, but by the removal 
of a most devouring blight from the worth of hei 
population — that every provocative to injustice 
may be done away, and the frailty of human 
principle be no longer left to such a ruinous and 
such a withering exposure. 

This instance we would not have tnentioned. 
but for the sake of adding another experimentaj 
|iroof to the lesson ot ouv text; and we now 

▼OL. VI. D 



74 THE POWER OF SELFISHNESS. 

hasten onward to the lesson itself, with a few n* 
its applications. 

We trust you are convinced, from \\hat has hc^rt 
said, that much of the actual honesty of the world 
is due to the selfishness of the world. And then 
you will surely admit, that, in as far as this is the 
actuating principle, honesty descends from its 
place as a rewardable, or even as an amiable 
virtue, and sinks down into the character of a 
mere prudential virtue — which, so far from con- 
ferring any moral exaltation on him by whom it 
is exemplified, emanates out of a propensity that 
seems inseparable from the constitution of every 
sentient being — and by which man is, in one point, 
assimilated either to the most worthless of his own 
species, or to those inferior animals among whom 
worth is unattainable. 

And let it not deafen the humbling impression 
of this argument, that you are not distinctly con- 
scious of the operation of selfishness, as presiding 
at every step over the honesty of your daily and 
familiar transactions ; and that the only inward 
checks against injustice, of which you are sensible, 
are the aversion of a generous indignancy towards 
it, and the positive discomfort you would incur by 
the reproaches of your own conscience. Selfish- 
ness, in fact, may have originated and alimented 
the whole of this virtue that belongs to you, and 
yet the mind incur the same discom.fort by the 
violation of it, that it would do by the violation of 
any other fif its established habits. And as to the 
generous indignancy of your feelings against all 
that is fraudulently and disgracefully wrong, let us 



THE POWER OF SELFISHNESS. 75 

never forget, that this may be the nurtured fruit 
of that common selfishness which Unks human 
beings with each other into a relationship of 
mutual dependance. This may be seen, in all its 
perfection, among the leagued and sworn banditti 
of the highway ; who, while execrated by society 
at large for the compact of iniquity into which they 
have entered, can maintain the most heroic fidelity 
to the virtues of their own brotherhood ; and be, 
in every way, as lofty and as chivalrous with their 
points of honour, as we are with ours ; and elevate 
as indignant a voice against the worthlessness of 
him who could betray the secret of their associa- 
tion, or break up any of the securities by which it 
was held together. And, in like manner, may we 
be the members of a wider combination, yet 
brought together by the tie of reciprocal interest; 
and all the virtues essential to the existence, or 
to the good of such a combination, may come to be 
idolized amongst us ; and the breath of human 
applause may fan them into a lustre of splendid 
estimation ; and yet the good man of society on 
earth be, in common with all his fellows, an utter 
outcast from the society of heaven — with his heart 
altogether bereft of that allegiance to God which 
forms the reigning principle of his unfallen creation 
—and in a state of entire destitution either as to 
that love of the Supreme Being, or as to that dis- 
interested love of those around us, which form the 
graces and the virtues of eternity. 

We have not affirmed that there is no such thing 
as a native and disinterested principle of honour 
among men. But we .^ 2"? affirmed, on a formef 



76 THE POWER OF S£LFISHNESS. 

occasion, that a sense of honour may be in thi» 
heart, and the sense of God be utterly away from 
it. And we affirm now, that much of the honest 
practice of the world is not due to honesty of 
principle at all, but takes its origin from a baser 
ingredient of our constitution altogether. How 
wide is the operation of selfishness on the one 
hand, and how limited is the operation of abstract 
principle on the other, it were difficult to deter- 
mine ; and such a labyrinth to man is his own 
heart, that he may be utterly unable, from his 
own consciousness, to answer this question. But 
amid all the difficulties of such an analysis to 
himself, we ask him to think of another who is 
unseen by us, but who. is represented to us as 
seeing all things. We know not in what characters 
this heavenly witness can be more impressively set 
forth, than as pondering the heart, as weighing the 
secrets of the heart, as fastening an attentive and 
a judging eye on all the movements of it, as trea- 
suring up the whole of man's outward and inward 
history in a book of remembrance ; and as keeping 
it in reserve for that day wken, it is said, that the 
secrets of all hearts shall be laid open, and God 
shall bring out every secret thing, whether it be 
good, or whether it be evil. Your consciousness 
may not distinctly inform you, in how far the 
integrity of your habits is due to the latent opera- 
tion of selfishness, or to the more direct and 
obvious operation of honour. But your conscious- 
ness may, perhaps, inform you, distinctly enough, 
how little a share the will of God has in the way 
of influence on any of your doings. Your own 



THK POWER OF SELFISHNESS. i I 

sense and memory of what passes within you may 
charge you with the truth of this monstroua 
ndictment — that you Uve without God in the 
world ; that however you may be signahzed among 
vour fellows, by that worth of character which is 
held in highest value and demand amongst the 
ndividuals of a mercantile society, it is at least 
without the influence of a godly principle that you 
have reached the maturity of an established repu- 
tation ; that either the proud emotions of rectitude 
which glow within your bosom are totally untinc- 
tured by a feeling of homage to the Deity — or that, 
without any such emotions. Self is the divinity you 
have all along worshipped, and your very virtues 
are so many offerings of reverence at her shrine. 
If such be, in fact, the nakedness of your spiritual 
condition, is it not high time, we ask, that you 
awaken out of this delusion, and shake the lying 
spirit of deep and heavy slumber away from you ? 
Is it not high time, when eternity is so fast coming 
on, that you examine your accounts with God, 
and seek for a settlement with that Being who will 
so soon meet your disembodied spirits with the 
question of — m hat have you done unto me ? And 
if all the virtues which adorn you are but the 
subserviences of time, and of its accommodations 
— if either done altogether unto yourselves, or done 
without the recognition of God on the spontaneous 
instigation of your own feelings — is it not high 
time that you lean no longer to the securities on 
which you have rested, and that you seek for 
acceptance with your Maker on a more firm and 
unalterable foundation ^ 



78 THE POWER or SELFISHNESS. 

This, then, is the terminating object of all the 
experience that we have tried to set before you. 
We want it to be a schoolmaster to bring you unto 
Christ. We want you to open your eyes to the 
accordancy which obtains between the theology ol 
the New Testament, and the actual state and 
history of man. Above all, we want you to turn 
your eyes inwardly upon yourselves, and there to 
behold a character without one trace or lineament 
of godliness — there to behold a heart, set uj)on 
totally other things than those which constitute the 
portion and the reward of eternity — there to behold 
every principle of action resolvible into the idolatry 
of self, or, at least, into something independant of 
the authority of God — there to behold how worthless 
in their substance are those virtues which look so 
imposing in their semblance and their display, ana 
draw around them here a popularity and an 
applause which will all be dissipated into nothing, 
when hereafter they are brought up for examina- 
tion to the judgment-seat. We want you, when 
the revelation of the gospel charges you with the 
totality and magnitude of your corruption, that 
you acquiesce in that charge ; and that you may 
perceive the trueness of it, under the disguise of 
all those hollow and unsubstantial accomplishments 
with which nature may deck her own. fallen and 
degenerate children. It is easy to be amused, 
and interested, and intellectually regaled, by an 
analysis of the human character, and a survey of 
human society. But it is not so easy to reach the 
individual conscience with the lesson — we are un- 
done. It is not so easy to strike the alarm into 



THE POWER OF SELFISHNESS. /iJ 

your hearts of the present guilt, and the future 
damnation. It is not so easy to send the pointed 
arrow of conviction into your bosoms, where it 
may keep by you, and pursue you Uke an arrow 
sticking fast ; or so to humble you into the con- 
clusion, that, in the sight of God, you are an 
accursed thing, as that you may seek unto him 
who became a curse for you, and as that the 
preaching of His cross might cease to be foolish- 
ness. 

Be assured, then, if you keep by the ground of 
being justified by your present works, you will 
perisii ; and though we may not have succeeded in 
convincing you of their worthlessness, be assured, 
that a day is coming, when such a flaw of deceitful- 
ness, in the principle of them all, sliall be laid open, 
as will demonstrate the equity of your entire and 
everlasting condemnation. To avert the fearfulness 
of that day is the message of the great atonement 
sounded in your ears; and the blood of Christ, 
cleansing from all sin, is offered to your acceptance ; 
and if you turn away from it, you add to the guilt 
of a broken law the insult of a neglected gospel. 
But if you take the pardon of the gospel on the 
footing of the gospel, then, such is the efficacy of 
this great expedient, that it will reach an application 
of mercy farther than the eye of your own conscience 
ever reached ; that it will redeem you from the 
guilt even of your most secret and unsuspected 
iniquities ; and thoroughly wash you from a taint 
of sinfulness, more inveterate than, in the blindness 
of nature, you e^er thought of, or ever conceived 
to belong to you. 



8U THE POWER OF SELFISHNESS. 

But when a man becomes a believer, there are 
two great events which take place at this great 
turning point in his history. One of them takes 
place in heaven — even the expunging of his name 
from the book of condemnation. Another of them 
takes place on earth — even the application of such 
a sanctifying influence to his person, that all old 
things are done away with him, and all things 
become new with him. He is made the workmanship 
of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. He is not 
merely forgiven the sin of every one evil work of 
which he had aforetime been guilty, but he is 
created anew unto the corresponding good woik. 
And, therefore, if a Christian, will his honesty be 
purified from that taint of selfishness by which the 
general honesty of this world is so deeply and 
extensively pervaded. He will not do this good 
thing, that any good thing may be done unto him 
again. He will do it on a simple regard to its own 
native and independent rectitude. He will do it 
because it is honourable, and because God will" 
him so to adorn the doctrine of his Saviour. Al 
his fair dealing, and all his friendship, will be fail 
dealing and friendship without interest. I'he prin- 
ciple that is in him will stand in no need of aid 
from any such auxiliary — but, strong in its own 
unborrowed resources, will it impress a legible 
stamp of dignity and uprightness on the whole 
variety of his transactions m the world. All men 
find it their advantage, by the integrity of their 
dealings, to prolong the existence of some gainful 
fellowship into which they may have entered. 
But with him, the same insullied integrity whicb 



THE POWER OF SELFISHNESS. 8i 

kept this fellowship together, and sustained the 
progress of it, will abide with hiin through its 
last transactions, and dignify its full and final 
termination. Most men find, that, without the 
reverberation of any mischief on their own heads, 
they could reduce, beneath the point of absolute 
justice, the charges of taxation. But he has a 
conscience both towards God, and towards man, 
which will not let hira ; and there is a rigid truth 
in all his returns, a pointed and precise accuracy 
in all his payments. When hemmed in with 
circumstances of difficulty, and evidently tottering 
to his fall, the demand of nature is, that he should 
ply his every artifice to secrete a provision for his 
family. But a Christian mind is incapable of 
artifice ; and the voice of conscience within him 
will ever be louder than the voice of necessity ; 
and he will be open as day with his creditors, nor 
put forth his hand to that which is rightfully theirs, 
any more than he would put forth his hand to the 
perpetration of a sacrilege ; and though released 
altogether from that tie of interest which binds a 
man to equity with his fellows, yet the tie of prin- 
ciple wUl remain with him in all its strength. Nor 
will it ever be found that he, for the sake of subsis- 
tence, will enter into fraud, seeing that, as one of 
the children of light, he would not, to gain the 
whole world, lose his own soul. 



82 GUILT NOT TO BE ESTIMATED BY GAIIT. 



DISCOURSE IV. 

THE GUILT OF DISHONESTY NOT TO BB 
ESTIMATED BY THE GAIN OF IT. 



" He that is faithful in that which is least, is faithful also in much ; 
and he that is unjust in the least, is unjust also in much."--* 
Luke xvi. 10. 

It is the fine poetical conception of a late poetical 
countryman, whose fancy too often grovelled among 
the despicable of human character — but who, at the 
same time, was capable of exhibiting, either in 
pleasing or in proud array, both the tender and the 
noble of human character — when he says of the 
man who carried a native unborrowed self-sustained 
rectitude in his bosom, that " his eye, even turned 
on empty space, beamed keen with honour." It 
was affirmed, in the last discourse, that much of 
the honourable practice of the world rested on the 
substratum of selfishness ; that society was held 
together in the exercise of its relative virtues, 
mainly, by the tie of reciprocal advantage ; that a 
man's own interest bound him to all those average 
equities which obtained in the neighbourhood 
around him ; and in which, if he proved himself 
to be glaringly deficient, he would be abandoned 
by the respect, and the confidence, and the good 
will, of the people with whom he had to do. It 
is a melancholy thought, how little the semblance 
of virtue upon earth betokens the real and 



GUILT NOT TO BE ESTIMATED BY GAIN 83 

substantial presence of virtuous principle among 
men. But, on the other hand, though it be a rare, 
there cannot be a more dignified attitude of the 
soul, than when of itself it kindles with a sense of 
justice, and the holy flame is fed, as it were, by 
its own energies ; than when man moves onwards 
in an unchanging course of moral magnanimity, 
and disdains the aid of those inferior principles by 
which gross and sordid humanity is kept from all the 
grosser violations ; than when he rejoices in truth 
as his kindred and congenial element; — so, that 
though unpeopled of all its terrestial accompani- 
ments ; though he saw no interest whatever to be 
associated with its fulfilment ; though without one 
prospect either of fame or of emolument before him, 
would his eye, even when turned on emptiness 
itself, still retain the living lustre that had been 
lighted up in it, by a feeling of inward and inde- 
pendent reverence. 

It has already been observed, and that fully 
and frequently enough, that a great part of the 
homage which is rendered to integrity in the world, 
is due to the operation of selfishness. And this 
substantially is the reason, why the principle of 
the text has so very slender a hold upon the 
human conscience. Man is ever prone to estimate 
the enormity of injustice, by the degree in which 
he suffers from it. He brings this moral question 
to the standard of his own interest. A master 
will bear with all the lesser liberties of his servants, 
so long as he feels them to be harmless ; and it is 
not till he is awakened to the apprehension of per- 
sonal injury from the amount or frequency of the 



84 GUILT NOT TO BE ESTIMATED BY GAIN. 

embezzlements, that his moral indignation is at aL 
sensibly awakened. And thus it is, that the 
maxim of our great Teacher of righteousness seems 
to be very much unfelt, or forgotten, in society. 
Unfaithfulness in that which is little, and unfaith- 
fulness in that which is much, are very far from 
being regarded, as ihey were by him under the 
same aspect of criminality. If there be no great 
hurt, it is felt that there is no great harm. The 
innocence of a dishonest freedom in respect of 
morality, is rated by its insignificance in respect 
of matter. The margin which separates the 
right from the wrong is remorselessly trodden under 
foot, so long as each makes only a minute and 
gentle encroachment beyond the landmark of his 
neighbour's territory. On this subject there is a 
loose and popular estimate, which is not at one 
with the deliverance of the New Testament ; a 
habit of petty invasion on the side of aggressors, 
which is scarcely felt by them to be at all iniqui- 
tous — and even on the part of those who are thus 
made free with there is a habit of loose and care- 
less toleration. There is, in fact, a negligence or 
a dormancy of principle among men, which causes 
this sort of injustice to be easily practised on the 
one side, and as easily put up with on the other ; 
and, in a general slackness of observation, is this 
virtue, in its strictness and in its delicacy, com- 
pletely overborne. 

It is the taint of selfishness, then, which has so 
marred and corrupted the moral sensibility of our 
world. And the man, it sncli a man can be, whose 
** eye, even turned on empty space, beams keeu 



GUILT HOT TO BE ESTIMATED BV GAIN. 85 

with honour;" and whose homage, therefore, to 
the virtue of justice, is altogether freed from the 
mixture of unworthy and interested feeUngs, will 
alone render to her, in every instance, a faultless 
and a completed offering. Whatever his forbear- 
ance to others, he could not suffer the slightest 
blot of corruption upon any doings of his own. 
He cannot be satisfied with any thing short of the 
very last jot and tittle of the requirements of equity 
being fulfilled. He not merely shares in the revolt 
of the general world against such outrageous 
departures from the rule of right, as would carry 
in their train the ruin of acquaintances or the 
distress of families. Such is the delicacy of the 
principle within him, that he could not have peace 
under the consciousness even of the minutest and 
least discoverable violation. He looks fully and 
fearlessly at the whole account which justice has 
against him ; and he cannot rest, so long as there 
is a single article unmet, or a single demand un- 
satisfied. If, in any transaction of his, there was 
so much as a farthing of secret and injurious 
reservation on his side, this would be to him like 
an accursed thing, which marred the character of 
the whole proceeding, and spread over it such an 
aspect of evil, as to offend and to disturb him. He 
could not bear the whisperings of his own heart, 
if it told him, that, in so much as by one iota of 
defect, he had balanced the matter unfairly between 
himself and the unconscious individual with whom 
he deals. It would lie a burden upon his mind 
to hurt and to make him unhappy, till the oppor- 
tunity of explanation had come round, and he had 



86 GUILT NOT TO BE ESTIMATED BY GAIN. 

obtained ease to his conscience, by acquitting hin>« 
self to the full of all his obligations. It is justice 
in the uprightness of her attitude; it is justice in 
the oiiwardness of her path ; it is justice disdaining 
every advantage that would tempt her, by ever so 
little, to the right or to the left; it is justice spurn- 
ing the littleness of each paltry enticement away 
from her, and maintaining herself, without devia- 
tion, in a track so purely rectilineal, that even the 
most jealous and microscopic eye could not find in 
it the slightest aberration : this is the justice set 
forth by our great moral Teacher in the passage 
now submitted to you ; and by which we are told, 
that this virtue refuses fellowship with every 
degree of iniquity that is perceptible ; and that, 
were the very least act of unfaithfulness admitted, 
she would feel as if in her sanctity she had been 
violated, as if in her character she had sustained 
an overthrow. 

In the further prosecution of this discourse, let 
us first attempt to elucidate the principle of oii- 
text, and then urge it onward to its practical con- 
sequences — both as it respects our general relation 
to God, and as it respects the particular lesson of 
faithfulness that may be educed from it. 

I. The great principle of the text is, that he 
who has sinned, though to a small amount in 
respect of the fruit of his transgression — provided 
he has done so, by passing over a forbidden limit 
which was distinctly known to him, has, in the act 
of doing so, incurred a full condemnation in respect 
of the principle of his transgression. In one word, 
that the gain of it may be small, while the guilt of 



GUILT NOT TO BE ESTIMATED BY GAIN. 87 

it m\j be great; that the latter ought not to be 
measm ed by the former ; but that he who is un- 
faithful in the least, shall be dealt with, in respect 
of the offence he has given to God, in the same 
way as if he had been unfaithful in much. 

The first reason which we would assign in 
vindication of this is, that, by a small act of injustice, 
the line which separates the right from the wrong, 
is just as effectually broken over as by a great act ot 
injustii^e. There is a tendency in gross and cor 
poreai man to rate the criminality of injustice by 
the at.iount of its appropriations — to reduce it to 
a computation of weight and of measure — to count 
the man who has gained a double sum by his dis 
honesty, to be doubly more dishonest than his 
neighbour — to make it an affair of product rather 
than of principle ; and thus to weigh the morality 
of a character in the same arithmetical balance 
with number or with magnitude. Now, this is 
not the rule of calculation on which our Saviour 
has proceeded in the text. He speaks to the man 
who is only half an inch within the limits of for- 
bidden ground, in the very same terms by which 
he addresses the man who has made the farthest 
and the largest incursions upon it. It is true, 
that he is only a little way upon the wrong side 
of the Hne of demarcation. But why is he upon 
it at all ? It was in the act of crossing that line, 
and not in the act of going onwards after he had 
crossed it — it was then that the contest between 
right and wrong was entered upon, and then it was 
decided. That was the instant of time at whicJi 
principle struck her surrender. The great pull 



88 GUILT NOT TO BE ESTIMATED BY GAIN. 

which the man had to make, was in the act of 
overleaping the fence of separation ; and after that 
was done, justice had no other barrier by which 
to obstruct his progress over the whole extent of 
the field which she had interdicted. There might 
be barriers of a different description. There might 
be still a revolting of humanity against the suffer- 
ings that would be inflicted by an act of larger 
fraud or depredation. There might be a dread of 
exposure, if the dishonesty should so swell, in point 
of amount, as to become more noticeable. There 
might, after the absolute limit between justice and 
injustice is broken, be another limit against the 
extending of a man's encroachments, in a terror of 
discovery, or in a sense of interest, or even in the 
relentings of a kindly or a compunctious feeling 
towards him who is the victim of injustice. But 
this is not the limit with which the question of a 
man's truth, or a man's honesty, has to do. These 
have already been given up. He may only be a 
little way within the margin of the unlawful terri- 
tory, but still he is upon it ; and the God who 
finds him there will reckon with him, and deal 
with him accordingly. Other principles, and 
other considerations, may restrain his progress to 
the very heart of the territory, but justice is not 
one of them. This he deliberately flung away 
from him, at that moment when he passed the line 
of circumvallation ; and, though in the neighbour- 
hood of that line, he may hover all his days at the 
petty work of picking and purloining such fragments 
as he meets with, though he may never venture 
himself to a place of more daring or distingui8he<J 



GUILT NOT TO BE ESTIMATED BY GAIN, tJ9 

atpocity, God sees of him, that, in respect of the 
principle of justice, at least, there is an utter 
unhingement. And thus it is, that the Saviour, 
Avho knew what was in man, and who, therefore, 
knew all the springs of that moral machinery by 
which he is actuated, pronounces of him who was 
unfaithful in the least, that he was unfaithful also 
iu much. 

, After the transition is accomplished, the pro- 
gress will follow of course, just as opportunity 
invites, and just as circumstances make it safe and 
practicable. For it is not with justice as it is with 
generosity, and some of the other virtues. There 
is not the same graduation in the former as there 
is in the latter. The man who, other circum- 
stances being equal, gives away a double sum in 
charity, may, with more propriety, be reckoned 
doubly more generous than his neighbour; than 
the man who, with the same equality of circum- 
stances, only ventures on half the extent of fraudu- 
lency, can be reckoned only one half as unjust as 
his neighbour. Each has broken a clear line of 
demarcation. Each has transgressed a distinct 
and visible limit which he knew to be forbidden. 
Each has knowingly forced a passage beyond his 
neighbour's landmark — and that is the place where 
justice has laid the main force of her interdict. 
As it respects the materiel of injustice, the ques- 
tion resolves itself into a mere computation of 
quantity. As it respects the morale of injustice, 
the computation is upon other principles. It is 
upon the larter that our Saviour pronounces him- 
self. And he gives us to understand, that a very 



90 QUILT NOT TO BE ESTIMATED BV GAIN. 

humble degree of the former may indicate the 
latter in all its atrocity. He stands on the breach 
between the lawful and the unlawful ; and he tella 
us, that the man who enters by a single footstep 
on the forbidden ground, immediately gathers upon 
his person the full hue and character of guiltiness. 
He admits no extenuation of the lesser acts of dis-« 
honesty. He does not make right pass into wrong, 
by a gradual melting of the one into tlie other. 
He does not thus obliterate the distinctions of 
morality. There is no shading off at the margin 
of guilt, but a clear and vigorous deUneation. It 
is not by a gentle transition that a man steps over 
from honesty to dishonesty. There is between 
them a wall rising up unto heaven ; and the high 
authority of heaven must be stormed, ere one inch 
of entrance can be made into the region of iniquity. 
The morality of the Saviour never leads him to 
gloss over beginnings of crime. His object ever 
is, as in tlie text before us, to fortify the limit, to 
cast a rampart of exclusion around the whole 
territory of guilt, and to rear it before the eye of 
man in such characters of strength and sacredness, 
as should make them feel that it is impregnable. 

The second reason, why he who is unfaithful 
in the least has incurred the condemnation of him 
who is unfaithful in much, is, that the littleness of 
the gain, so far from giving a littleness to the 
guilt, is in fact a circumstance of aggravation. 
There is just this difference. He who has com- 
mitted injustice for the sake of a less advantage, 
has done it on the impulse of a less temptation. 
He has parted with his honesty at an inferior 



GUILT NOT TO BE ESTIMATED BY GAIN. 91 

price ; and this circumstance may go so to equalize 
the estimate, as to bring it very much to one with 
the deliverance, in the text, of our great Teacher 
of righteousness. The limitation between good 
and evil stood as distinctly before the notice of the 
small as of the great depredator; and he has just 
made as direct a contravention to the first reason, 
when he passed over upon the wrong side of it. 
And he may have made little of gain by the enter- 
prise, but this does not allay the guilt of it. Nay, 
by the second reason, this may serve to aggravate 
the wrath of the Divinity against him. It proves 
how small the price is which he sets upon his eternity, 
and how cheaply he can bargain the favour of God 
away from him, and how low he rates the good of 
an inheritance with him, and for what a trifle he 
can dispose of all interest in his kingdom and in 
his promises. The very circumstance which gives 
to his character a milder transgression in the eyes 
of the world, makes it more odious in the judg- 
ment of the sanctuary. The more paltry it is in 
respect of profit, the more profane it may be in 
respect of principle. It likens him the more to 
profane Esau, who sold his birthright for a mess of 
pottage, And thus it is, indeed, most woful to 
think of such a senseless and alienated world ; and 
how heedlessly the men of it are posting their infat- 
uated way to destruction; and how, for as little gain 
as might serve them a day, they are contracting 
as much guilt as will ruin them for ever ; and are 
profoundly asleep in the midst of such designs and 
Buch doings, as will form the valid materials of 
O^ir entire and everlasting condemnation. 



92 GUILT NOT TO BE ESTIMATED BY GAIN. 

It is with argument such as this that we woald 
try to strike conviction among a very numerous 
class of offenders in society — those who, in the 
various departments of trust, or service, or agency, 
are ever practising, in littles, at the work of secret 
appropriation — those whose hands are in a state 
of constant defilement, by the putting of them 
forth to that which they ought to touch not, and 
taste not, and handle not — those who silently 
number such pilferments as can pass unnoticea 
among the perquisites of their office ; and who, by 
an excess in their charges, just so slight as to 
escape detection, or by a habit of purloining, just 
so restrained as to elude discovery, have both a 
conscience very much at ease in their own bosoms, 
and a credit very fair, and very entire, among their 
acquaintances around them. They grossly count 
upon the smallness of their transgression. But 
they are just going in a small way to hell. They 
would recoil with violent dislike from the act of a 
midnight depredator. It is just because terrors, 
and trials, and executions, have thrown around it 
the pomp and the circumstance of guilt. But at 
another bar, and on a day of more dreadful 
solemnity, their guilt will be made to stand out in 
its essential characters, and their condemnation 
will be pronounced from the lips of Him who 
judgeth righteously. They feel that they have 
incurred no outrageous forfeiture of character 
among men, and this instils a treacherous compla- 
cency into their own hearts. But the piercing 
eye of Him who looketh down from heaven is upon 
the reality of the question; and He who ponders 



GUILT NOT TO BE ESTIMATED BY GAIN. 93 

the secrets of every bosom, can perceive, that the 
man who recoils only from such a degree of injustice 
as is notorious, may have no justice whatever in 
his character. He may have a sense of reputation. 
He may have the fear of detection and disgrace. 
He may feel a revolt in his constitution against the 
magnitude of a gross and glaring violation. He 
may even share in all the feelings and principles of 
that conventional kind of morality which obtains in 
his neighbourhood. But, of that principle which 
is surrendered by the least act of unfaithfulness, he 
has no share whatever. He perceives no overawing 
sacredness in that boundary which separates the 
right from the wrong. If he only keep decently 
near, it is a matter of indifference to him whether 
he be on this or on that side of it. He can be 
unfaithful in that which is least. There may be 
other principles, and other considerations, to 
restrain him ; but certain it is, that it is not now 
the principle of justice which restrains him from 
being unfaithful in much. This is given up ; and, 
through a blindness to the great and important 
principle of our text, this virtue may, in its essen- 
tial character, be as good as banished from the 
world. All its protections may be utterly over- 
thrown. The line of defence is effaced by which 
it ought to have been firmly and scrupulously 
guarded. The sign-posts of intimation, which 
ought to warn and to scare away, are planted 
along the barrier ; and when, in defiance to them, 
the barrier is broken, man will not be checked by 
any sense of honest)', at least, from expatiating 
over the whole of the forbidden territory. And 



94 GUILT NOT TO BE ESTIMATED BY GAIN. 

thus may we gather from the countless peccadilloea 
which are so current in the various departments 
of trade, and service, and agency — from the secret 
freedoms in which many do indulge, without one 
remonstrance from their own hearts — from the 
petty inroads that are daily practised on the 
confines of justice, by which its line of demarcation 
is trodden under foot, and it has lost the moral 
distinctness, and the moral charm, that should have 
kept it unviolate — from the exceeding multitude of 
such offences as are frivolous in respect of the 
matter of them, but most fearfully important in 
re?pect of the principle in which they originate — 
from the woful amount of that unseen and unre- 
corded guilt which escapes the cognizance of 
human law, but, on the application of the touchstone 
in our text, may be made to stand out in characters 
of severest condemnation — from instances, too 
numerous to repeat, but certainly too obvious to 
be missed, even by the observation of charity, may 
we gather the frailty of human principle, and the 
virulence of that moral poison, which is now in 
such full circulation to taint and to adulterate the 
character of our species. 

Before finishing this branch of our subject, 
we may observe, that it is with this, as with many 
other phenomena of the human character, that we 
are nci long in contemplation upon it, without 
coming in sight of that great characteristic of 
fallen man, which meets and forces itself upon us 
i"n every view that we take of him — even the great 
moral disease of ungodliness. It is at the precise 
limit between tlie right and the wrong that the 



I 



GUILT NOT TO BE ESTIMATED BY GAIN. 95 

flaming sword of God's law is placed. It is there 
that " Thus saith the Lord" presents itself, in 
legible characters, to our view. It is there where 
the operation of His commandment begins ; and 
not at any of those higher gradations, where a man's 
dishonesty first appals himself by the chance of 
its detection, or appals others by the mischief and 
insecurity which it brings upon social life. An 
extensive fraud upon the revenue, for example, 
unpopular as this branch of justice is, would bring 
a man down from his place of eminence and credit 
in mercantile society. That petty fraud which is 
associated with so many of those smaller payments, 
where a lie in the written acknowledgment is 
both given and accepted, as a way of escape from 
the legal imposition, circulates at large among 
the members of the great trading community. In 
the former, and in all the greater cases of injustice, 
there is a human restraint, and a human terror, in 
operation. There is disgrace and civil punishment 
to scare away. There are all the sanctions of that 
conventional morality which is suspended on the 
fear of man, and the opinion of man ; and which, 
without so much as the recognition of a God, 
would naturally point its armour against every 
outrage that could sensibly disturb the securities 
and the rights of human society. But so long as 
the disturbance is not sensible — so long as the 
injustice keeps within the limits of smallness and 
secrecy — so long as it is safe for the individual to 
practise it, and, borne along on the tide of general 
examjile and connivance, he has nothing to restrain 
Sim but that distinct and inflexible word of God, 



96 GUILT NOT TO BE ESTIMATED BY GAIN. 

which proscribes all unfaithfulness, and admits o. 
it in no degrees, and no modifications — then, let 
the almost universal sleep of conscience attest, 
how little of God there is in the virtue of this 
world ; and how much the peace and the protect 
tion of society are owing to such moralities, as 
the mere selfishness of man would lead him to 
ordain, even in a community of atheists. 

II. Let us now attempt to unfold a few of the 
practical consequences that may be drawn from 
the principle of the text, both in respect to our 
general relation with God, and in respect to the 
particular lesson of faithfulness which may be 
educed from it. 

1. There cannot be a stronger possible illus- 
tration of our argument, than the very first act of 
retribution that occurred in the history of our 
species. " And God said unto Adam, Of the tree 
of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not 
eat of it. For in the day thou eatest thereof, thou 
shalt surely die. But the woman took of the fruit 
thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her 
husband with her, and he did eat." What is it 
that invests the eating of a solitary apple with a 
grandeur so momentous ? How came an action, 
in itself so minute, to be the germ of such mighty 
consequences ? How are we to understand that 
our first parents, by the doing of a single instant, 
not only brought death upon themselves, but shed 
this big and baleful disaster over all their posterity? 
We may not be able to answer all these questions, 
but we may at least learn, what a thing of danger 
it is, under the government of a holy and inflexible 



GUILT NOT TO BE ESTIMATED BY GAIN. 97 

God, to tamper with the limits of obedience. By 
the eating of that apple a ciear requirement was 
broken, and a distinct transition was made from 
loyalty to rebellion, and an entrance was effected 
into the region of sin — and thus did this one act 
serve like the opening of a gate for a torrent of 
mighty mischief ; and, if the act itself was a trifle, 
it just went to aggravate its guilt — that, for such a 
trifle, the authority of God could be despised and 
trampled on. At all events. His attribute of Truth 
stood committed to the fulfilment of the threaten- 
ing ; and the very insignificancy of the deed, which 
provoked the execution of it, gives a sublimer 
character to the certainty of the fulfilment. We 
know how much this trait, in the dealings of God 
with man, has been the jeer of infidelity. But ip 
all this ridicule, there is truly nothing else tha» 
the grossness of materialism. Had Adam, instead 
of plucking one single apple from the forbidden 
tree, been armed with the power of a malignant 
spirit, and spread a wanton havock over the face 
of paradise, and spoiled the garden of its loveli- 
ness, and been able to mar and to deform the 
whole of that terrestrial creation over which God 
had so I'ecently rejoiced — the punishment he sus- 
tained would have looked, to these arithmetical 
moralists, a more adequate return for the offence 
of which he had been guilty. They cannot see 
how the moral lesson rises in greatness, just in 
proportion to the humility of the material accom- 
paniments — and how it wraps a sublimer glory 
around the holiness of tne Godhead — and how 
aom the transaction, such as it is, the conclusion 

▼OL. Vi. K 



yS GUILT NOT TO BE FSTI M ATKiJ BY GAIN. 

Cometh forth more nakedly, and, therefore, more 
impressively, that it is an evil and a bitter thing 
to sin against the Lawgiver. God said, *' Let 
there be light, and it was light;" and it has 
ever been regarded as a sublime token of the 
Deity, that, from an utterance so simple, an ac- 
complishment so quick and so magnificent should 
have followed. God said, " That he who eateth 
of the tree in the midst of the garden should die." 
It appears, indeed, but a little thing, that one 
should put forth his hand to an apple and taste of 
it. But a saying of God was involved in the 
matter ; and heaven and earth must pass away, 
ere a saying of his can pass away ; and so the 
apple became decisive of the fate of a world ; and, 
out of the very scantiness of the occasion, did there 
emerge a sublimer display of truth and of holiness. 
The beginning of the world was, indeed, the 
period of great manifestations of the Godhead ; 
and they all seem to accord, in style and character, 
with each other; and in that very history, which 
has called forth the profane and unthinking levity 
of many a scorner, may we behold as much of the 
majesty of principle, as, in the creation of light, 
we behold of the majesty of power. 

But this history furnishes the materials of a 
contemplation still more practical. If, for this 
one offence, Adam and hi? posterity have been so 
visited — if so rigorously and so inflexibly precise 
be the spirit of God's administration — if, under the 
economy of heaven, sin, even in the very humblest 
of its exhibitions, be the object of an intolerance 
80 jealous and so unrelenting — if the Deity be such 



GUILT NOT TO BE ESTIMATED BY GAIN. 93 

as this transaction manifests Him to be, disdain 
ful of fellowship even with the very least iniquity, 
and dreadful in the certainty of all his accomplish- 
ments against it — if, for a single transgression, all 
the promise and all the felicity of paradise had to 
be broken up, and the wretched offenders had to 
be turned abroad upon a world, now changed by 
the curse into a wilderness, and their secure and 
lovely home of innocence behoved to be abandoned, 
and to keep them out a flaming sword had to turn 
every way, and guard their reaccess to the bowers 
of immortality — if sin be so very hateful in the eye 
of unspotted holiness, that, on its very first act, 
and first appearance, the wonted communion be- 
tween heaven and earth was interdicted — if that 
was the time at which God looked on our species 
with an altered countenance, and one deed of 
disobedience proved so terribly decisive of the fate 
and history of a world — what should each indi- 
vidual amongst us think of his own danger, whose 
life has been one continued habit of disobedience ? 
If we be still in the hands of that God who laid 
so fell a condemnation on this one transgression, 
let us just think of our many transgressions, and 
that every hour we live multiplies the account of 
them; and that, however they may vanish from 
our own remembrance, they are still alive in the 
records of a judge whose eye and whose memory 
never fail Him. Let us transfer the lesson we 
have gotten of heaven's jurisprudence from the case 
of our fii'st parents to our own case. Let us com- 
pare our lives with the law of God, and we shall 
find that our sins are past reckoning. Let ua 



lOO GUILT NOT TO BE ESTIMATED BY GAIN 

take account of the habitual posture of our souls, 
as a posture of dislike for the things that are above, 
and we shall find that our thoughts and our desires 
are ever running in one current of sinfulness. 
Let us just make the computation how often we 
fail in the bidden charity, and the bidden godli- 
ness, and the bidden long-suffering — all as clearly- 
bidden as the duty that was laid on our first parents 
— and we shall find, that we are borne down under 
a mountain of iniquity ; that, in the language of 
the Psalmist, our transgressions have gone over 
our heads, and, as a heavy burden, are too heavy 
for us ; and if we be indeed under the government of 
Him who followed up the offence of the stolen apple 
by so dreadful a chastisement, then is wrath gone 
out unto the uttermost against every one of us. 
There is something in the history of that apple 
which might be brought specially to bear on the 
case of those small sinners who practise in secret 
at the work of their petty depredations. But it 
also carries in it a great and a universal moral. 
It tells us that no sin is small. It serves a general 
purpose of conviction. It holds out a most alarm- 
ing disclosure of the charge that is against us ; 
and makes it manifest to the conscience of him 
who is awakened thereby, that, unless God Him- 
self point out a way of escape, we are indeed most 
hopelessly sunk in condemnation. And, seeing that 
such wrath went out from the sanctuary of this 
unchangeable God, on the one offence of our first 
parents, it irresistibly follows, that if we, manifold 
in guilt, take not ourselves to His appointed way 
of reconciliation — if we refuse the overtures of 



GUILT NOT TO BE ESTIMATED BY OaIN. 

Him, who then so visited the one offence through 
which all are dead, but is now laying before us all 
that free gift, which is of many offences unto justi- 
fication — in other words, if we will not enter into 
peace through the offered Mediator, how much 
greater must be the wrath that abideth on us ? 

Now, let the sinner have his conscience schooled 
by such a contemplation, and there will be no rest 
whatever for his soul till he find it in the Saviour. 
Let him only learn, from the dealings of God with 
the first Adam, what a God of holiness he himself 
has to deal with ; and let him further learn, from 
the history of the second Adam, that, to manifest 
himself as a God of love, another righteousness 
had to be brought in, in place of that from which 
man had fallen so utterly away. There was a 
faultless obedience rendered by Him, of whom it is 
said, that He fulfilled all righteousness. There 
was a magnifying of the law by one in human form, 
who, up to the last jot and tittle of it, acquitted 
Himself of all its obligations. There was a pure, 
and lofty, and undefiled path, trodden by a holy 
and harmless Being, who gave not up His work 
upon earth, till, ere He left it, He could cry out, 
that It was finished ; and so had wrought out for 
us a perfect righteousness. Now, it forms the 
most prominent annunciation of the New Testa- 
ment, that the reward of this righteousness is 
offered unto all — so that there is not one of us who 
is not put by the gospel upon the alternative of 
being either tried by our own merits, or treated 
according to the merits of Him who became sin 
for us, though He knew no sin, that we might be 



102 GUILT NOT TO BE ESTIMATED BY GAIN. 

made the righteousness of God in Him. Let the 
sinner just look unto himself, and look, unto the 
Saviour. Let him advert not to his one, but to 
his many oiFences ; and that, too, in the sight of a 
God, who, but for one so slight and so insignifi- 
cant in respect of the outward description, as the 
eating of a forbidden apple, threw off a world into 
banishment, and entailed a sentence of death upon 
all its generations. Let him learn from this, that 
for sin, even in its humblest degrees, there exists 
in the bosom of the Godhead no toleration ; and 
how shall he dare, with the degree and the fre- 
quency of his own sin, to stand any longer on a 
ground, where, if he remain, the fierceness of a 
consuming fire is so sure to overtake him ? The 
righteousness of Christ is without a flaw, and there 
he is invited to take shelter. Under the actual 
regimen, which God has established in our world, 
it is indeed his only security — his refuge from the 
tempest, and hiding place from the storm. The 
only beloved son offers to spread His own un- 
spotted garment as a protection over him ; and, if 
he be rightly alive to the utter nakedness of his 
moral and spiritual condition, he will indeed make 
no tarrying till he be found in Christ, and find that 
in Him there is no condemnation. 

Now, it is worthy of remark, that those principles, 
which shut a man up unto the faith, do not take 
flight and abandon him, after they have served this 
temporary purpose. They abide with him, and 
work their appropriate influence on his character, 
and serve as the germ of a new moral creation ; 
and we can afterwards detect their operation in his 



I 



GUILT NOT TO 3E ESTIMATED BY GAIN. 103 

heart and life ; so, that if they were present at the 
formation of a saving belief, they are not less 
unfailingly present witli every true Christian, 
throughout the whole of his future history, as the 
elements of a renovated conduct. If it was sensi- 
bihty to the evil of sin which helped to wean the 
man from himself, and led him to his Saviour, this 
sensibility does not fall asleep in the bosom of an 
awakened sinner, after Christ has given him light 
— but it grows with the growth, and strengthens 
with the strength, of his Christianity. If, at the 
interesting period of his transition from nature to 
grace, he saw, even in the very least of his offences, 
a deadly provocation of the Lawgiver, he does not 
lose sight of this consideration in his future progress 
— nor does it barely remain with him, like one of 
the unproductive notions of an inert and unpro- 
ductive theory. It gives rise to a fearful 
jealousy in his heart of the least appearance of evil; 
and, with every man who has undergone a genuine 
process of conversion, do we behold the scrupulous 
avoidance of sin, in its most slender, as well as in 
its more aggravated forms. If it was the perfec- 
tion of the character of Christ w^ho felt that it 
became Him to fulfil all righteousness, that offered 
him the first solid foundation on which he could 
lean — then, the same character, which first drew 
his eye for the purpose of confidence, still continues 
to draw his eye for the purpose of imitation. At 
the outset of faith, all the essential moralities of 
thought, and feeling, and conviction, are in play ; 
nor is there any thing in the progress of a real 
faith which is calculated to throw them back again 



104 GUILT NOT TO BE ESTIMATED BY GAIN. 

into the dormancy out of which they had ariseiu 
They break out, in fact, into more full and 
flourishing display on every new creature, with 
every new step, and new evolution, in his mental 
history. All the principles of the gospel serve, as 
it were, to fan and to perpetuate his hostility 
against sin ; and all the powers of the gospel enable 
him, more and more, to fultil the desires of his 
heart, and to carry his purposes of hostility into 
execution. In the case of every genuine believer, 
who walks not after the flesh, but after the spirit, 
do we behold a fulfilling of the righteousness of the 
law — a strenuous avoidance of sin, in its slightest 
possible taint or modification — a strenuous per- 
formance of duty, up to the last jot and tittle of its 
exactions — so, that let the untrue professors of the 
faith do what they will in the way of antinomianism, 
and let the enemies of the faith say what they will 
about our antinomianism, the real spirit of the 
dispensation under which we live is such, that 
whosoever shall break one of the least of these 
commandments, and teach men so, is accounted the 
least — whosoever shall do and teach them is 
accounted the greatest. 

2. Let us, therefore, urge the spirit and the 
practice of this lesson upon your observation. The 
place for the practice of it is the familiar and 
week-day scene. The principle for the spirit of 
it descends upon the heart, from the sublimest 
heights of the sanctuary of God. It is not vulgar- 
izing Christianity to bring it down to the very 
humblest occupations of human life. It is, in 
fact, dignifying human life, by bringing it up to the 



GUILT NOT TO BE ESTIMATED BY GAIN. 105 

level of Chii'otiuMLty. It may look to some a 
degradation of the pulpit, when the household 
servant is told to make her firm stand against the 
temptation of open doors, and secret opportunities; 
or when the confidential agent is told to resist the 
slightest inclination to any unseen freedom with the 
property of his employers, or to any undiscoverable 
excess in the charges of his management ; or when 
the receiver of a humble payment is told, that the 
tribute which is due on every written acknowledg- 
ment ought faithfully to be met, and not fictitiously 
to be evaded. This is not robbing religion of its 
sacredness, but spreading its sacredness over the 
face of society. It is evangelizing human life, by 
impregnating its minutest transactions with the 
spirit of the gospel. It is strengthening the wall 
of partition between sin and obedience. It is the 
teacher of righteousness taking his stand at the 
outpost of that territory which he is appointed to 
defend, and warning his hearers of the danger that 
lies in a single footstep of encroachment. It is 
letting them know, that it is in the act of stepping 
over the limit, that the sinner throws the gauntlet 
of his defiance against the authority of God. And 
though he may deceive himself with the imagination 
that his soul is safe, because the gain of his injustice 
is small, such is the God with whom he has to do, 
that, if it be gain to the value of a single apple, 
then, within the compass of so small an outward 
dimension, may as much guilt be enclosed as that 
which hath brougl.t death into our world, and 
carrrod it Ho^rn in a descending ruin upon all it» 
generations. 



IOC GUILT NOT TO BE ESTIMATED BY GAIK. 

It may appear a very .ittle thing, when you ar« 
told to be honest in little matters ; when the servant 
is told to keep her hand from every one article 
about which there is not an express or understood 
allowance on the part of her superiors ; when the 
dealer is told to lop off the excesses of that minuter 
fraudulency, which is so currently practised in the 
humble walks of merchandise ; when the workman 
is told to abstain from those petty reservations of 
the material of his work, for which he is said to 
have such snug and ample opportunity ; and when, 
without pronouncing on the actual extent of these 
transgressions, all are told to be faithful in that 
which is least, else, if there be truth in our text, 
they incur the guilt of being unfaithful in much. 
It may be thought, that because such dishonesties 
as these are scarcely noticeable, they are therefore 
not worthy of notice. But it is just in the pro- 
portion of their being unnoticeable by the human 
eye, that it is religious to refrain from them. 
These are the cases in which it will be seen, 
whether the control of the omniscience of God 
makes up for the control of human observation — 
in which the sentiment, that thou God seest me, 
should carry a preponderance through all the 
secret places of a man's history — in which, when 
every earthly check of an earthly morality is with- 
drawn, it should be felt, that the eye of God is 
upon him, and that the judgment of God is ic 
reserve for him. To him who is gifted with a true 
discernment of these matters, will it appear, that 
often, in proportion to the smallness of the doings, 
is the sacredness of that principle which causes 



GUILT NOT TO BE Jlf TIMATED BY GAIN. 10? 

t!iem to be done with integrity ; that honesty, in 
little transactions, bears upon it more of the aspect 
of holiness, than honesty in great ones ; that the 
man of deepest sensibility to the obligations of the 
law, is he who feels the quickening of moral alarm 
at its slightest violations ; that, in the morality of 
grains and of scruples, there may be a greater 
tenderness of conscience, and a more heaven-born 
sanctity, than in that larger morality which flashes 
broadly and observably upon the world ; — and that 
thus, in the faithfulness of the household maid, or 
of the apprentice boy, there may be the presence 
of a truer principle, than there is in the more con- 
spicuous transactions of human business — what 
they do, being done, not with eye-service — what 
they do, being done unto the Lord. 

And here we remark, that nobleness of condition 
is not essential as a school for nobleness of character; 
nor does man require to be high in office, ere he 
can gather around his person the worth and the 
lustre of a high-minded integrity. It is delightful 
to think, that humble life may be just as rich in 
moral grace, and moral grandeur, as the loftier 
places of society ; that as true a dignity of principle 
may be earned by him who, in homeliest drudgery, 
plies his conscientious task, as by him who stands 
entrusted with the fortunes of an empire ; that the 
poorest menial in the land, who can lift a hand 
unsoiled by the pilferments that are within his 
reach, may have achieved a victory over temptation, 
to the full as honourable as the proudest patriot 
can bonst, who has spurned the 1:ribery of courts 
away from him. It is cheering to know, from the 



108 GUILT NOT TO BE ESTIMATED BY GAIN. 

heavenly judge Himself, that he who is faithful in 
the least, is faithful also in much ; and that thus, 
among the labours of the field and of the work-shop, 
it is possible for the peasant to be as bright in 
honour as the peer, and have the chivalry of as 
much truth and virtue to adorn him. 

And, as this lesson is not little in respect o: 
principle, so neither is it little in respect of influ- 
ence on the order and well-being of human society. 
He who is unjust in the least, is, in respect of 
guilt, unjust also in much. And to reverse this 
proposition, as it is done in the first clause of ova 
text — he who is faithful in that which is least, is, 
in respect both of righteous principle and of actual 
observation, faithful also in much. Who is the 
man to whom I would most readily confide the 
whole of my property ? He who would most 
disdain to put forth an injurious hand on a single 
farthing of it. Who is the man from whom I 
would have the least dread of any unrighteous 
encroachment ? He, all the delicacies of whose 
principle are awakened, when he comes within 
sight of the limit which separates the region of 
justice from the region of injustice. Who is the 
man whom we shall never find among the greater 
degrees of iniquity ? He who shrinks with sacred 
abhorrence from the lesser degrees of it. It is a 
true, though a homely maxim of economy, that if 
we take care of our small sums, our great sums 
will take care of themselves. And, to pass from 
our own things to the things of others, it is no less 
true, that if principle should lead us all to maintain 
the care of strictest honesty over our neigbbour'a 



GUILT NOT TO EE ESTIMATED BY GAIN 109 

pennies, then will his pounds lie secure from the 
grasp of injustice, behind the barrier of a moral 
impossibility. This lesson, if carried into effect 
among you, would so strengthen all the ramparta 
of security between man and man, as to make them 
utterly impassable; and therefore, while, in the 
matter of it, it may look, in one view, as one of 
the least of the commandments, it, in regard 
both of principle and of effect, is, in another view 
of it, one of the greatest of the commandments. And 
we therefore conclude with assuring you, that 
nothing will spread the principle of this command- 
ment to any great extent throughout the mass of 
society, but the principle of godliness. Nothing 
will secure the general observation of justice 
amongst us, in its punctuality and in its preciseness, 
but such a precise Christianity as many affirm to 
be puritanical. In other words, the virtues of 
society, to be kept in a healthful and prosperous 
condition, must be upheld by the virtues of the 
sanctuary. Kunian law may restrain many of 
the grosser violations. But without religion 
among the people, justice will never be in extensive 
operation as a moral principle. A vast proportion 
of the species will be as unjust as the vigilance 
and the severities of law allow them to be. A 
thousand petty dishonesties, which never will, and 
never can be brought within the cognizance of any 
of our courts of administration, will still continue to 
derange the business of human life, and to stir up 
all the heartburnings of suspicion and resentment 
among the members of human society. And it is, 
indeed, a triumphant reversion awaiting the 



110 GUILT NOT TO BE ESTIMATED BY GAIN. 

Christianity of the New Testament, when it shal 
become manifest as day, that it is her doctrine 
alone, which, by its searching and sanctifying 
influence, can so moralise our world — as that each 
may sleep secure in the lap of his neighbour's 
integrity, and the charm of confidence, betweeu 
man and man, will at length be felt in the businesf 
of every town, and in the bosom of every family. 



THE CHRISTIAN LAW OF RECIPROCITY. Ml 



DISCO USE V. 

ON THE GREAT CHRISTIAN LAW OF RECI- 
PROCITY BETWEEN MAN AND MAN. 



«* Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do 
to you, do ye even so to them : for this is the law and the 
prophets." — Matt. vii. 12. 

There are two great classes in human society 
between whom there He certain mutual claims and 
obligations, which are felt by some to be of very 
difficult adjustment. There are those who have 
requests of some kind or other to make ; and there 
are those to whom the requests are made, and 
with whom there is lodged the power either to 
grant or to refuse them. Now, at first sight, it 
would appear, that the firm exercise of this power 
of refusal is the only barrier by which the latter 
class can be secured against the indefinite encroach- 
ments of the former; and that, if this were removed, 
all the safeguards of right and property would be 
removed along with it. The power of refusal, on 
the part of those who have the right of refusal, 
may be abolished by an act of violence, on the 
part of those who have it not ; and then, when 
this happens in individual cases, we have the crimes 
of assault and robbery ; and when it happens on a 
more ^extended scale, we have anarchy and insur- 
rection in the land. Or the power of refusal may 
be taken away by an authoritative precept of 



Il2 THE CHRISTIAN LAW OF RECIPROCITY. 

religion ; and then might it still be matter of a^fpre- 
hension, lest our only defence against the inroads 
of selfishness and injustice were as good as given 
up, and lest the peace and interest of families 
should be laid open to a most fearful exposure, by 
the enactments of a romantic and impracticable 
system. Whenever this is apprehended, the temp- 
tation is strongly felt, either to rid ourselves of the 
enactments altogether, or at least to bring them 
down in nearer accommodation to the feelings and 
the conveniencies of men. 

And Christianity, on the very first blush of it, 
appears to be precisely such a religion. It seems 
to take away all lawfulness of resistance from 
the possessor, and to invest the demander with 
such an extent of privilege, as would make the two 
classes of society to which we have just now 
adverted, speedily change places. And this is the 
true secret of the many laborious deviations that 
have been attempted, in this branch of morality, 
on the obvious meaning of the New Testament. 
This is the secret of those many qualifying clauses, 
by which its most luminous announcements have 
been beset, to the utter darkening of them. This 
it is which explains the many sad invasions that 
have been made on the most manifest and undeni- 
able literalities of the law and of the testimony. 
And our present text, among others, has receivec^ 
its full share of mutilation, and of what may be 
called " dressing up," from the hands of com- 
mentators — it having wakened the very alarms of 
which we have just spoken, and called forth the 
very attempts to quiet and to subdue them. 



THE CHRISTIAN LAW OF RECIPROCITY. 113 

Surely, it has been said, we Ovan never be required 
to do unto others what they have no right, and no 
reason, to expect from us. The demand must not 
be an extravagant one. It must he within the 
hmits of moderation. It must be such as, in the 
estimation of every justly thinking person, is 
counted fair in the circumstances of the case. The 
principle on which our Saviour, in the text, rests 
the obligation of doing any particular thing to 
others, is, that we wish others to do that thing unto 
us. But this is too much for an affrighted selfish- 
ness ; and, for her own protection, she would put 
forth a defensive sophistry upon the subject ; and 
in place of that distinctly announced principle, on 
which the Bible both directs and specifies what 
the things are which we should do unto others, 
does she substitute another principle entirely — • 
which is, merely to do unto others such things as 
are fair, and right, and reasonable. 

Now, there is one clause of this verse which 
would appear to lay a positive interdict on all 
these qualifications. How shall we dispose of a 
phrase, so sweeping and universal in its import, 
as that of " all things whatsoever ?" We cannot 
think that such an expression as this was inserted 
for nothing, by him who has told us, that " cursed 
is every one who taketh away from the words of 
this book." There is no distinction laid down 
between things fair, and things unfair — between 
things reasonable and things unreasonable. Both 
are comprehended in the " all things whatsoever." 
The signification is plain and absolute, that, let 
the thing be what it may. if you wish others to do 



U4 THE CHRISTIAN LAW OF RECIPROCITY. 

that thing for you, it lies imperatively upon you to 
do the very same thing for them also. 

But, at this rate, you may think that the whole 
system of human intercourse would go into un- 
iiingement. You may wish your next-door neigh- 
bour to present you with half his fortune. In this 
case, we know not how you are to escape from the 
conclusion, that you are bound to present him with 
the half of yours. Or you may wish a relative to 
burden himself with the expenses of all your family. 
It is then impossible to save you from the positive 
obligation, if you are equally able for it, of doing 
the same service to the family of another. Or 
you may wish to engross the whole time of an 
acquaintance in personal attendance upon yourself. 
'Jlien, it is just your part to do the same extent 
of civility to another who may desire it. These 
are only a few specifications, out of the manifold 
varieties, whetlier of service or of donation, which 
are conceivable between one man and another; 
nor are we aware of any artifice of explanation by 
vhich they can possibly be detached from the " all 
things whatsoever" of the verse before us. These 
are literalities which we are not at liberty to com- 
promise — but are bound to urge, and that eimply, 
according to the terms in which they have beea 
conveyed to us by the great Teacher of righteous- 
ness. This may raise a sensitive dread in many 
a bosom. It may look like the opening of a flood- 
gate, through which a torrent of human rapacity 
v.ould be made to set in on the fair and measured 
domains of property, and by which all the fences 
of legality would be overthrown. It is some such 



THE CHRISTIAN LAW OF RECIPUOCITY, 115 

fearful anticipation as this v/hich causes casuistry 
to ply its wily expedients, and busily to devise its 
many limits, and its many exceptions, to the 
morality of the New Testament. And yet, we 
think it possible to demonstrate of our text, that 
no such modifying is requisite ; and that, though 
admitted strictly and rigorously is the rule of our 
daily conduct, it would lead to no practical con- 
clusions which are at all formidable. 

For, what is the precise circumstance which lays 
the obligation of this precept upon you ? There 
may be other places in the Bible where you are 
required to do things for the benefit of your neigh- 
bour, whether you would wish your neighbour to 
do these things for your benefit or not. But this 
is not the i-equirement here. There is none other 
thing laid upon you in this place, than that you 
should do that good action in behalf of another, 
which you would like that other to do in behalf of 
yourself. If you would not like him to do it for 
you, then there is nothing in the compass of this 
sentence now before you, that at all obligates you 
to do it for him. If you would not like your 
neighbour to make so romantic a surrender to your 
interest, as to offer you to the extent of half his 
fortune, then there is nothing in that part of the 
gospel code which now engages us, that renders it 
imperative upon you to make the same offer to 
your neighbour. If you would positively recoil, 
in all the reluctance of ingenuous delicacy, from 
the selfishness of laying on a relation the burden 
of the expenses of aii your family, then this is not 
the good o£ce that you would iiave him to do unto 



116 THE CHRISTIAN LAW OF RECIPKJCITY. 

you ; and this, therefore, is nor the good office 
which the text prescribes you to do unto hira. li 
you have sucli consideration for another's ease, 
and another's convenience, that you could not take 
the ungenerous advantage of so much of his time 
for your accommodation, there may be other verses 
in the Bible which point to a greater sacrifice, on 
your part, for the good of others, than you would 
hke these others to make for yours; but, most 
assuredly, this is not the verse which imposes that 
sacrifice. If you would not that others should do 
these things on your account, then these things 
form no part of the " all things whatsoever" you 
would that men should do unto you ; and, there- 
fore, they form no part of the " all things whatso- 
ever" that you are required, by this verse, to do 
unto them. The bare circumstance of your posi- 
tively not wishing that any such services should be 
rendered unto you, exempts you, as far as the 
single authority of this precept is concerned, from 
the obligation of rendering these services to others. 
This is the limitation to the extent of those services 
which are called for in the text ; and it is surely 
better, that every limitation to a commandment of 
God's, should be defined by God himself, than that 
it should be drawn from the assumptions of human 
fancy, or from the fears and the feelings of human 
convenience. 

Let a man, in fact, give himself up to a strict 
and literal observation of the precept in this verse, 
and it will impress a two-fold direction upon him, 
It will not only guide him to certain performance* 
of good in behalf of others, but it will guide him to 



THE CHRISTIAN LAW OF RECIPUOCITY. 117 

the regulation of his own desires of good from them. 
For his desires of good from others are here set up 
as the measure of his performances of good to 
others. The more selfish and unbounded his 
desires are, the larger are those performances with 
the obligation of which he is burdened. Whatso- 
ever he would that others should do unto him, he 
is bound to do unto them; and, therefore, the 
more he gives way to ungenerous and extravagant 
wishes of service from those who are around him, 
the heavier and more insupportable is the load of 
duty which he brings upon himself. The com- 
mandment is quite imperative, and there is no 
escaping from it ; and if he, by the excess of his 
selfishness, should render it impracticable, then 
the whole punishment, due to the guilt of casting 
aside the authority of this commandment, follows 
in that train of punishment which is annexed to 
selfishness. There is one way of being relieved 
from such a burden. There is one way of reduc- 
ing this verse to a moderate and practicable require- 
ment; and that is, just to give up selfishness — 
just to stifle all ungenerous desires — just to 
moderate every wish of service or liberality from 
others, down to the standard of what is right and 
equitable ; and then there may be other verses in 
the Bible, by which we are called to be kind even to 
the evil and the unthankful. But, most assuredly, 
this verse lays upon us none other thing, than that 
we should do such services for others as-'are right 
and equitable. 

l^he more extravagant, then, a man's wishes of 
accommodation from others are, the wider is the 



118 THE CHRISTIAN LAW OF RECIPROCIT'S. 

distance between him and the bidden performances 
of our text. The separation of him from his duty 
increases at the rate of two bodies receding from 
each other by equal and contrary movements. 
The more selfish his desires of service are from 
others, the more feeble, on that very account, will 
be his desires of making any surrender of himself 
to them, and yet the greater is the amount of that 
surrender which is due. The poor man, in fact, 
is moving himself away from the rule ; and the 
rule is just moving as fast away from the man. 
As he sinks, in the scale of selfishness, beneath the 
point of a fair and moderate expectation from others, 
does the rule rise in the scale of duty, with its 
demands upon him ; and thus there is rendered to 
him double for every unfair and ungenerous imposi- 
tion that he would make on the kindness of those 
who are around him. 

Now, there is one way, and a very effectual 
one, of getting these two ends to meet. Mode- 
rate your own desires of service from others, and 
you will moderate, in the same degree, all those 
duties of service to others which are measured by 
these desires. Have the delicacy to abstain from 
any wish of encroachment on the convenience or 
property of another. Have the high-mindedness 
to be indebted for your own support to the exer- 
tions of your own honourable industry, rather than 
to the dastardly habit of preying on the simplicity 
of those around you. Have such a keen sense of 
equity, and such a fine tone of independent feeling, 
that you could not bear to be the cause of hardship 
or distress to a single human creature, if you could 



THE CHRISTIAN L.^-V ^F RECIPROCITY. 1I9 

help it. Let the same sph-it be in you, which the 
Apostle wanted to exemplify before the eye of hia 
disciples, when he coveted no man's gold, or silver, 
or apparel ; when he laboured not to be charge- 
able to any of them ; but wrought with his own 
hands, rather than be burdensome. Let this mind 
be in you, which was also in the Apostle of the 
Gentiles ; and then, the text before us will not 
come near you with a single oppressive or imprac- 
ticable requirement. There may be other passages, 
where you are called to go beyond the strict line of 
justice, or common humanity, in behalf of your 
suffering brethren. But this passage does not 
touch you with any such preceptive imposition: 
and you, by moderating your wishes from others 
down to what is fair and equitable, do, in fact, 
reduce the rule which binds you to act according 
to the measure of these wishes, down to a rule of 
precise and undeviating equity. 

The operation is somewhat like that of a governor, 
or fly, in mechanism. This is a very happy con- 
trivance, by which all that is defective or excessive 
in the motion, is confined within the limits of 
equability ; and every tendency, in particular, to 
any mischievous acceleration, is restrained. The 
impulse given by this verse to the conduct of man 
among his fellows, would seem, to a superficial 
observer, to carry him to all the excesses of a most 
ruinous and quixotic benevolence. But let him 
only look to the skilful adaptation of the fly. Just 
suppose the control of moderation and equity to be 
laid upon his own wishes, and there is not a single 
impulse given to his conduct beyond the rate of 



120 THE CHRISTIAN LAW OF RECIPROCITY. 

moderation and equity. You are not required here 
to do all things whatsoever in behalf of others, but 
to do all things whatsoever for them, that you 
would should be done unto yourself. This is the 
check by which the whole of the bidden movement 
is governed, and kept from running out into any 
hurtful excess. And such is the beautiful operation 
of that piece of moral mechanism that we are now 
employed in contemplating, that while it keeps 
down all the aspirations of selfishness, it does, in 
fact, restrain every extravagancy, and impresses on 
its obedient subjects no other movement, than that 
of an even and inflexible justice. 

This rule of our Saviour's, then, prescribes 
moderation to our desires of good from others, as 
well as generosity to our doings in behalf of others; 
and makes the first the measure of obligation to 
the second. It may thus be seen how easily, in a 
Christian society, the whole work of benevolence 
could be adjusted, so as to render it possible for 
the givers not only to meet, but also to overpass, 
the wishes and expectations of the receivers. The 
rich man may have a heavier obligation laid upon 
him by other precepts of the New Testament ; but, 
by this precept, he is not bound to do more for 
the poor man, than what he himself would wish, 
in like circumstances, to be done for him. And 
'let the poor man, on the other hand, wish for no 
more than what a Christian ought to wish for ; let 
him work and endure to the extent of nature's 
sufferance, rather than beg — and only beg, rather 
than that he should starve ; and in such a state of 
principle among men, a tide of bp.neficence woold 



THE CHRISTIAN LAW OF RECIPROCITY. 121 

SO go forth upon all the vacant places in society, 
as that there should be no room to receive it. The 
duty of the rich, as connected with this adminis- 
tration, is of so direct and positive a character, as 
to obtrude itself at once on the notice of the 
Christian moralist. But the poor also have a duty 
in it— to which we feel ourselves directed by the 
train of argument which we have now been pro- 
secuting — and a duty, too, we think, of far greater 
importance even than the other, to the best interests 
of mankind. 

For, let us first contrast the rich man who is 
ungenerous in his doings, with the poor man who 
is ungenerous in his desires ; and see from which 
of the two it is, that the cause of charity receives 
the deadlier infliction. There is, it must be admitted, 
an individual to be met with occasionally, who 
represents the former of these two characters ; 
with every aiFection gravitating to self, and to its 
sordid gratifications and interests ; bent on bis own 
pleasure, or his own avarice — and so engrossed 
with these, as to have no spare feeling at all for 
the brethren of his common nature ; with a heart 
obstinately shut against that most powerful of appU- 
cations, the look of genuine and imploring distress 
— and whose very countenance speaks a surly and 
determined exclusion on every call that proceeds 
from it ; who, in a tumult of perpetual alarm about 
new cases, and new tales of sufi'ering, and new 
plans of philanthropy, has at length learned to 
resist and to resent every one of them; and, spurning 
the whole of this disturbance impatiently away, to 
maintain a firm defensive over the close system c \ 

VOL. VI. F 



122 THE CHKISTIArJ LAW OF RECIPROCITY. 

his own selfish luxuries, and his own snug accom- 
modations. Such a man keeps back, it must be 
allowed, from the cause of charity, what he ought 
to have rendered to it in his own person. There is 
a diminution of the philanthropic fund, up to the 
extent of what benevolence would have awarded 
out of his individual means, and individual oppor- 
tunities. The good cause is a sufferer, not by 
any positive blow it has sustained, but by the 
simple negation of one friendly and fostering hand, 
that else might have been stretched forth to aid 
and patronise it. There is only so much less o! 
direct countenance and support, than would other- 
wise have been ; for, in this our age, we have no 
conception whatever of such an example being at 
all infectious. For a man to wallow in prosperity 
himself, and be unmindful of the wretchedness that 
is around him, is an exhibition of altogether so 
ungainly a character, that it will far oftener provoke 
an observer to affront it by the contrast of his own 
generosity, than to render it the approving testi- 
mony of his imitation. So that all we have lost 
by the man who is ungenerous in his doings, 
is his own contribution to the cause of philanthropy. 
And it is a loss that can be borne. The cause of 
this world's beneficence can do abundantly without 
him. There is a ground that is yet unbroken, and 
there are resources which are still unexplored, 
that will yield a far more substantial produce to 
the good of humanity, than he, and thousands as 
wealthy as he, could render to it, out of all their 
rapabilities. 

But there is a far wider mischief inflicted on 



THE CHRISTIAN LAW OF RECIPROCITY, 123 

the cause of charity, by the poor man who s un- 
generous in his desires ; by him, whom evry act 
of kindness is sure to call out to the reaction oi 
some new demand, or new expectation; by him, 
on whom the hand of a giver has the effect, not of 
appeasing his wants, but of inflaming his rapacity, 
by him who, trading among the sympathies of the 
credulous, can dexterously appropriate for himself 
a portion tenfold greater than what would have 
blest and brightened the aspect of many a deser- 
ving family. Him we denounce as the worst 
enemy of the poor. It is he whose ravenous gripe 
wrests from them a far more abundant benefaction, 
than is done by the most lordly and unfeeling pro- 
prietor in the land. He is the arch-oppressor ot 
his brethren; and the amount of the robbery which 
he has practised upon them, is not to be estimated 
by the alms which he has monopolized, by the 
food, or the raiment, or the money, which he has 
diverted to himself, from the more modest sufferers 
around him. He has done what is infinitely worse 
than turning aside the stream of charity. He has 
closed its floodgates. He has chilled and alienated 
the hearts of the wealthy, by the gall of bitterness 
which he has infused into this whole ministration. 
A few such harpies would suffice to exile a whole 
neighbourhood from the attentions of the benevo- 
lent, by the distrust and the jealousy wherewith 
they have poisoned their bosoms, and laid an arrest 
on all the sensibilities that else would have flowed 
from them. It is he who, ever on the watch and 
on the wing about some enterprise of imposture, 
makes it his business to work and to prey on th© 



124 THE CHRISTIAN LAW OF RLCIPROCITT. 

compassionate principles of our nature; it is hi 
who, in effect, grinds the faces of the poor, and 
that, with deadher severity than even is done hy 
the great baronial tyrant, the battlements of whose 
castle seem to frov/n, in all the pride of aristo- 
cracy, on the territory that is before it. There 
is, at all times, a kindliness of feeling ready to 
stream forth, with a tenfold greater liberality than 
ever, on the humble orders of life ; and it is he, 
and such as he, who have congealed it. He has 
raised a jaundiced medium between the rich and 
the poor, in virtue of which, the former eye the 
latter with suspicion ; and there is not a man who 
^vears the garb, and prefers the applications of 
poverty, that has not suffered from the worthless 
impostor who has gone before him. Ihey are, in 
fact, the deceit, and the indolence, and the low 
sordidness of a few, who have made outcasts of the 
many, and locked against them the feelings of the 
wealthy in a kind of iron imprisonment. The rich 
man who is ungenerous in his doings, keeps back 
one labourer from the field of chai'ity. But a poor 
man who is ungenerous in his desires, can expel a 
thousand labourers in disgust away from it. He 
sheds a cruel and extended blight over the fair 
region of philanthropy ; and many have abandoned 
it, who, but for him, would fondly have lingered 
thereupon ; very many, who, but for the way in 
which their simplicity has been tried and trampled 
upon, would still have tasted the luxury of doing 
good unto the poor, and made it their delight, as 
well as their duty, to expend and expatiate among 
their habitations. 



THE CHRISTIAN LAW OF RECIPROCITY. 120 

We say not this to exculpate the rich, for it ia 
their part not to be weary in well-doing, but to 
prosecute the work and the labour of love under 
every discouragement. Neither do we say this 
to the disparagement of the poor ; for the picture 
we have given is of the few out of the many ; and 
the closer the acquaintance with humble life 
becomes, will it be the more seen of what a high 
pitch of generosity even the poorest are capable. 
They, in truth, though perhaps they are not aware 
of it, can contribute more to the cause of charity, 
by the moderation of their desires, than the rich 
can by the generosity of their doings. They, 
without, it may be, one penny to bestow, might 
obtain a place in the record of heaven, as the 
most liberal benefactors of their species. There 
is nothing in the humble condition of life they 
occupy, which precludes them from all that is 
great or graceful in human charity. There is a 
way in which they may equal, and even outpeer, 
the wealthiest of the land, in that very virtue of 
which wealth alone has been conceived to have the 
exclusive inheritance. There is a pervading 
character in humanity which the varieties of rank 
do not obliterate ; and as, in virtue of the common 
corruption, the poor man maybe as effectually the 
rapacious despoiler of his brethren, as the man of 
opulence above him — so, there is a common excel- 
lence attainable by both ; and through which, the 
poor man may, to the full, be as splendid in 
generosity as the rich, and yield a far more impor- 
tant contribution to the peace and comfort of 
society. 



126 THE CHRISTIAN LAW OF RECIPROCITy. 

To make this plain — it is in virtue of a generous 
doing on the part of a rich man, when a sum of 
money is offered for the rehef of want ; and it is in 
virtue of a generous desire on the part of a poor 
man, when this money is refused ; when, with the 
feeUng, that his necessities do not just warrant 
him to be yet a burden upon others, he dechnes to 
touch the offered hberahty ; when, with a deUcate 
recoil from the unlooked-for proposal, he still 
resolves to put it for the present away, and to 
iind, if possible, for himself a little longer ; when, 
btanding on the very margin of dependence, he 
would yet like to struggle with the difficulties of 
his situation, and to maintain this severe but hon- 
ourable conflict, till hard necessity should force 
him to surrender. Let the money which he has 
thus so nobly shifted from himself take some new 
direction to another ; and who, we ask, is the 
giver of it ? The first and most obvious reply is, 
that it is he who owned it : but, it is still more 
emphatically true, that it is he who has declined 
it. It came origmally out of the rich man's 
abundance; but it was the noble-hearted generosity 
of the poor man that handed it onwards to its final 
destination. He did not emanate the gift ; but it 
is just as much that he has not absorbed it, but 
left it to find its full conveyance to some neighbour 
poorer than himseU', to some family still more 
friendless and destitute than his own. It was 
given the first time out of an overflowing fulness. 
It is given the second time out of stinted and self- 
denying penury. In the world's eye, it is the 
proprietor who bcitoTved the charity. But, in 



I 



THE CHRISTIAN LAW OF RECIPROCITY. 12? 

heaven's eye, the poor man who waived it away 
from himself to another is the more illustrious 
philanthropist of the two. The one gave it out 
of his affluence. The other gave it out of the 
sweat of his brow. He rose up early, and sat up 
late, that he might have it to bestow on a poorer 
than himself ; and without once stretching forth a 
giver's hand to the necessities of his brethren, 
still is it possible, that by him, and such as him, 
may the main burden of this world's benevolence 
be borne. 

It need scarcely be remarked, that, without 
supposing the offer of any sum made to a poor 
man who is generous in his desires, he, by simply 
keeping himself back from the distributions of 
charity, fulfils all the high functions which we have 
now ascribed to him. He leaves the charitable 
fund untouched for all that distress which is more 
clamorous than his own ; and we, therefore, look, 
not to the original givers of the money, but to 
those who line, as it were, the margin of pauperism, 
and yet firmly refuse to enter it — we look upon 
them as the pre-eminent benefactors of society, 
who narrow, as it were, by a wall of defence, the 
ground of human dependence, and are, in fact, 
the guides and the guardians of all that opulence 
can bestow. 

Tims it is, that when Christianity becomes 
universal, the doings of the one party, and the 
desires of the other, will meet and overpass. The 
poor will wish for no more than the rich will be 
delighted to bestow ; and the rule of our text, 
which every real Christian at present finds so 



128 THE CHRISTIAN LAW OF RECIPROCITY. 

practicable, will, when carried over the fac<i of 
society, bind all the members of it into one con- 
senting brotherhood. The duty of doing good to 
others will then coalesce with that counterpart 
duty which regulates our desires of good from 
them ; and the work of benevolence will, at length, 
be prosecuted without that alloy of rapacity on 
the one hand, and distrust on the other, which 
serves so much to fester and disturb the whole of 
this ministration. To complete this adjustment, 
it is in every way as necessary to lay all the 
incumbent moralities on those who ask, as on 
those who confer ; and never till the whole text, 
which comprehends the wishes of man as well as 
his actions, wield its entire authority over the 
species, will the disgusts and the prejudices, which 
form such a barrier between the ranks of human 
life, be effectually done away. It is not by the 
abolition of rank, but by assigning to each rank 
its duties, that peace, and friendship, and order, 
will at length be firmly established in our world, 
it is by the force of principle, and not by the force 
of some great political overthrow, that a consum- 
mation so delightful is to be attained. We have 
no conception whatever, that, even in millennia? 
days, the diversities of wealth and station will at 
length be equalized. On looking forward to the 
time when kings shall be the nursing fathers, and 
queens the nursing mothers of our church, we 
think that we can behold the perspective of as 
varied a distribution of place and property as 
before. In the pilgrimage of life, there will still 
be the moving procession of the few chariott*'d in 



;' THE CHRISTIAN LAW OF RECIPROCITY. 12^ 

■plendour on the highway, and the many pacing 
by their side along the Une of the same journey. 
There will, perhaps, be a somewhat more elevated 
footpath for the crowd; and there will be an air of 
greater comfort and sufficiency amongst them ; 
and the respectability of evident tvorth and good- 
ness will sit upon the countenance of this general 
population. But, bating these, we look for no 
great change in the external aspect of society. 
It will only be a moral and a spiritual change. 
Kings will retain their sceptres, and nobles their 
coronets ; but, as they float in magnificence along, 
will they look with benignant feeling on the humble 
wayfarers ; and the honest salutations of regard 
and reverence will arise to them back again ; and, 
should any weary passenger be ready to sink un- 
friended on his career, will he, at one time, be 
borne onwards, by his fellows on the pathway, and, 
at another, will a shower of beneficence be made 
to descend from the crested equipage that over- 
takes him. It is Utopianism to think, that, in 
the ages of our world which are yet to come, the 
outward distinctions of life will not all be upholden. 
But it is not Utopianism, it is Prophecy to aver, 
that the breath of a new spirit will go abroad over 
the great family of mankind — so, that while, to 
the end of time, there shall be the high and the 
low in every passing generation, will the chai'ity of 
kindred feelings, and of a common understanding, 
create a fellowship between them on their way, 
till they reach that heaven where human love 
shall be perfected, and all human greatness iff 
unknown. 

F 2 



130 THE CHRISTIAN LAW OF RECIPROCTTY. 

Ill various places of the New Testament, do we 
see the checks of spirit and delicacy laid upon all 
extravagant desires. Oar text, while it enjoins 
the performance of good to others, up to the full 
measure of your desires of good from them, equally 
enjoins the keeping down of these desires to the 
measure of your performances. If Christian 
dispensers had only to do with Christian recipients, 
the whole work of benevolence would be with ease 
and harmony carried on. All that was unavoidable 
— all that came from the hand of Providence — all 
that was laid upon our suffering brethren by the 
unlooked-for visitations of accident or disease — all 
that pain or misfortune which necessarily attaches 
to the constitution of the species — all this the text 
most amply provides for ; and all this a Christian 
society would be delighted to stretch forth their 
means for the purpose of alleviating or doing 
away. 

We should not have dwelt so long upon this 
lesson, were it not for the essential Christian 
principle that is involved in it. The morality of 
the gospel is not more strenuous on the side of the 
duty of giving of this world's goods when it is 
needed, than it is against the desire of receiving 
when it is not needed. It is more blessed to give 
than to receive, and therefore less blessed to receive 
than to give. For the enforcement of this principle 
among the poorer brethren, did Paul give up a 
vast portion of his apostolical time and labour ; 
and that he might be an ensample to the Hock of 
working with his own hands, rather than be 
burdensome, did he set himself down to the occu* 



THE CHRISTIAN LAW OF RECIPROCITY. J 3 

pation of a tent-maker. That lesson is surely 
worthy of engrossing one sermon of an uninspired 
teacher, for the sake of which an inspired Apostle 
of the Gentiles engrossed as much time as would 
have admitted the preparation and the delivery of 
many sermons. Bat there is no more striking 
indication of the whole spirit and character of the 
gospel in this matter, than the example of him who 
is the author of it — and of whom we read these 
affecting words, that he came into the world not 
to be ministered unto, but to minister. It is a 
righteous thing in him who has of this world's 
goods, to minister to the necessities of others : but 
it is a still higher attainment of righteousness in 
him who has nothing but the daily earnings of his 
daily work to depend upon, so to manage and to 
strive that he shall not need to be ministered unto. 
Christianity overlooks no part of human conduct ; 
and by providing for this in particular, does it, hi 
fact, overtake, and that with a precept of utmost 
importance, the habit and condition of a very 
extended class of human society. And never does 
the gospel so exhibit its adaptation to our species 
— and never does virtue stand in such characters 
of strength and sacredness before us — as when 
impregnated with the evangelical spirit, and urged 
by evangelical motives, it takes its most direct 
sanction from the life and doings of the Saviour. 

And he who feels as he ought, will bear with 
cheerfulness all that the Saviour prescribes, when 
he thinks how much it is for him that the Saviour 
has borne. We speak not of his poverty all the 
time that He lived upon earth, We speak not of 



132 THE CHRISTIAN LAW OF RECIPROCITY. 

those years when, a houseiess wanderer in an 
unthankful world, He had not where to lay hia 
head. We speak not of the meek and uncom- 
plaining sufferance with which He met the many 
ills that oppressed the tenor of His mortal existence 
But we speak of that awful burden which crushed 
and overwhelmed its termination. We speak of 
that season of the hour and the power of darkness, 
when it pleased the Lord to bruise Him, and to 
make His soul an offering for sin. To estimate 
aright the endurance of Him who himself bore our 
infirmities, would we ask of any individual to 
recollect some deep and awful period of abandon^ 
ment in his own liistory — when that countenance 
•which at one tin»e beamed and brightened upon 
Him from above, was mantled in thickest darkness 
— when the iron of remorse entered into his soul — 
and, laid on a bed of torture, he was made to 
behold the evil of sin, and to taste of its bitterness. 
Let him look back, if he can, on this conflict of 
many agitations, and then figure the whole of this 
mental wretchedness to be borne off by the ministers 
of vengeance into hell, and stretched out unto 
eternity. And if, on the great day of expiation, a 
full atonement was rendered, and all that should 
have fallen upon us was placed upon the head ot 
the sacrifice — let him hence compute the weight 
and the awfulness of those sorrows which were 
carried by Him on whom the chastisement of our 
peace was laid, and who poured out His soul unto 
the death for us. If ever a sinner, under such a 
visitation, shall again emerge into peace and joy in 
believing — if he ever shall again find tiis way w 



THE CHUISTIAN LAW OF RECIPROCITY. 133 

that fountain which is opened in the house of Judah 
— if he shall recover once more that sunshine of 
the soul, which, on the days that are past, disclosed 
to him the beauties of holiness here, and the 
glories of heaven hereafter — if ever he shall hear 
with effect, in this world, that voice from the 
mercy-seat, which still proclaims a welcome to the 
chief of sinners, and beckons him afresh to recon- 
ciliation — O ! how gladly then should he bear, 
throughout the remainder of his days, the whole 
authority of the Lord who bought him ; and bind 
for ever to his own person that yoke of the Saviour 
which is easy, and that burden which is light. 



134 OM THE DISSIPATION OF LAEG£ CITIS8. 

DISCOURSE VI. 

ON THE DISSIPATION OF LARGE CITIES. 



" Let no man deceive you with Tain words : for because of th«sa 
tilings Cometh the wrath of God upon the children of disobe 
dieuce." — EPHES. v. 6. 

The [IE is one obvious respect in which the standard 
of morality amongst men, differs from that pure 
and universal standard which God hath set up for 
the obedience of His subjects. Men will not de- 
mand very urgently of each other, that, which doea 
\iot very nearly, or very immediately, affect their 
own personal and particular interest. To the 
violations of justice, or truth, or humanity, they 
will be abundantly sensitive, because these offer a 
most visible and quickly felt encroachment on this 
interest. And thus it is, that the social virtues, 
even without any direct sanction from God at all, will 
ever draw a certuin portion of respect and reverence 
around them ; and that a loud testimony of abhor- 
rence may often be heard from the mouths of ungodly 
men, against all such vices as may be classed under 
the general designation of vices of dishonesty. 

Now, the same thing does not hold true of 
another class of vices, which may be termed the 
vices of dissipation. These do not touch, in so 
visible or direct a manner, on the security of what 
man possesses, and of what man lias the greatest 
value for. But man is a selfish being, and there- 



ON THE DISSIPATION OF LAltGE CITIES. I il 

fore it is, that the ingredient of selfishness gives 
a keenness to his estimation of the evil and enormity 
of the former vices, which is scarcely felt at all in 
any estimation he may form of the latter vices. It 
is very true, at the same time, that if one were to 
compute the whole amount of the mischief they 
bring upon society, it would be found, that the 
profligacies of mere dissipation go very far to break 
up the peace, and enjoyment, and even the relative 
virtues of the world ; and that, if these profligacies 
were reformed, it would work a mighty augmenta- 
tion on the temporal good both of individuals and 
families. But the connexion between sobriety 
of character, and the happiness of the community, 
is not so apparent, because it is more remote 
than the connexion which obtains between integrity 
of character, and the happiness of the community ; 
and man being not only a selfish but a short-sighted 
being, it follows, that while the voice of execration 
may be distinctly heard against every instance of 
fraud or of injustice, instances of licentiousness 
may occur on every side of us, and be reported on 
the one hand with the utmost levity, and be listened 
to, on the other, with the most entire and complacent 
toleration. 

Here, then, is a point, in which the general 
morality of the world is at utter and irreconcile- 
able variance with the law of God. Here is a 
case, in which the voice that cometh forth from 
the tribunal of public opinion pronounces one 
thing, and the voice that cometh forth from the 
sanctuary of God pronounces another. When 
there is an agreement between these two voice?, 



136 ON THE DISSIPATION OF LARGE CITIES 

the principle on which obedience is rendei-cd to 
their joint and concurring authority, may be alto- 
gether equivocal; and, with religious and irreligious 
men, you may observe an equal exhibition of all 
the equities, and all the' civilities of life. But 
when there is a discrepancy between these two 
voices — or when the one attaches a criminality to 
certain habits of conduct, and is not at all seconded 
by the testimony of the other — then do we escape 
the confusion of mingled motives, and mingled 
authorities. The character of the two parlies 
emerges out of the ambiguity which involved it. 
The law of God points, it must be allowed, as 
forcible an anathema against the man of dishonesty, 
as against the man of dissipation. But the chief 
burden of the world's anathema is laid on the head 
of the former ; and therefore it is, that, on the latter 
ground, we meet with more discriminative tests of 
principle, and gather more satisfying materials for 
the question of — who is on the side of the Lord of 
hosts, and who is against Him ? 

The passage we have now submitted to you, 
looks hard on the votaries of dissipation. It is 
like eternal truth, lifting up its own proclamation, 
and causing it to be heard amid the errors and the 
delusions of a thoughtless world. It is like the 
Deity himself, looking forth, as He did, from a 
cloud, on the Egyptians of old, and troubling the 
souls of those who are lovers of pleasures, more 
than lovers of God. It is like the voice of heaven, 
crying down the voice of human society, and send- 
ing forth a note of alarm amongst its giddy genera- 
tions. It is like the unrolling of a portion of that 



ON THP. DISSIPA'I'ION OF LARGE CITIES. 1S7 

book of higher jurisprudence, out of which we 
shall be judged on the day of our coming account, 
and setting before our eyes an enactment, which, 
if we disregard it, will turn that day into the day 
of our coming condemnation. The words of man 
are adverted to in this solemn proclamation of God, 
against all unlawful and all unhallowed enjoyments, 
and they are called words of vanity. He seta 
aside the authority of human opinion altogether; 
and, on an irrevocable record, has He stamped 
such an assertion of the authority that belongeth 
to Himself only, as serves to the end of time for an 
enduring memorial of His will ; and as commits 
the truth of the Lawgiver to the execution of a 
sentence of wrath against all whose souls are 
hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. There is, in 
fact, a peculiar deceitfulness in the matter before 
us ; and, in this verse, are we warned against it — 
" Let no man deceive you with vain words ; for, 
because of these things, the wrath of God cometh 
on the children of disobedience." 

In the preceding verse, there is such an enumera- 
tion as serves to explain what the things are which 
are alluded to in the text ; and it is such an enu- 
meration, you should remark, as goes to fasten the 
whole terror, and the whole threat, of the coming 
vengeance — not on the man who combines in his 
own person all the characters of iniquity which are 
specified, but on the man who realizes any one oi 
these characters. It is not, you will observe, the 
conjunction and, but the conjunction or, which is 
interposed between them. It is not as if we said, 
that the man who is dishonest, and licentious, and 



138 ON THK DISSIPATION OF LAUGK CITIES. 

covetous, and unfeeling, shall not inherit the king- 
dom of God — but tiie man who is either dishonest, 
or licentious, or covetous, or unfeeling. On the 
single and exclusive possession of any one of thes« 
attributes, will God deal with you as with an enemy 
The plea, that we are a little thoughtless, but we 
have a good heart, is conclusively cut asunder by 
this portion of the law and of the testimony. And 
in a corresponding passage, in the ninth verse of 
the sixth chapter of Paul's first epistle to the 
Corinthians, the same peculiarity is observed in 
the enumeration of those who shall be excluded 
from God's favour, and have the burden of God's 
wrath laid on them through eternity. It is not 
the man who combines all the deformities of charac- 
ter which are there specified, but the man who 
realizes any one of the separate deformities. Some 
of them are the vices of dishonesty, others of them 
are the vices of dissipation ; and, as if aware of a 
deceitfulness from this cause, he, after telling us 
that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom 
of God, bids us not be deceived — for that neither 
the licentious, nor the abominable, nor thieves, nor 
covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extor- 
tioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God. 

He wlio keepeth the whole law, but offendeth 
in one point, says the Apostle James, is guilty of 
all. The truth is, that his disobedience on this 
one point may be more decisive of the state of his 
loyalty to God, than his keeping of all the rest. It 
may be the only point on which the character of 
his loyalty is really brought to the trial. All his 
conformities to the law of God might have been 



ON THE DISSIPATION OF LARGE CITIES. 139 

rendered, because they thwarted not his own 
inclination; and, therefore, would have been ren- 
dered, though there had been no law at all. The 
single infraction may have taken place in the only 
case where there was a real competition between 
the will of the creature, and the will of the Creator ; 
and the event proves to which of the two the right 
of superiority is awarded. Allegiance to God in 
truth is but one principle, and may be described 
by one short and summary expression ; and one 
act of disobedience may involve in it such a total 
surrender of the principle, as goes to dethrone 
God altogether from the supremacy which belongs 
to Him. So that the account between a creature 
and the Creator is not like an account made up of 
many items, where the expunging of one item 
would only make one small and fractional deduc- 
tion from the whole sum of obedience. If you 
reserve bat a single item from this account, and 
another makes a principle of completing and ren- 
dering up the whole of it, then your character 
varies from his not by a slight shade of difference, 
but stands contrasted with it in direct and diametric 
opposition. We perceive, that, while with him 
the will of God has the mastery over all his 
inclinations, with you there is, at least, one inclina- 
tion which has the mastery over the will of God ; 
that, while in his bosom there exists a single and 
subordinating principle of allegiance to the law, in 
yours there exists another principle, which, on the 
coming round of a fit opportunity, developes itself 
\n an act of transgression ; that, while with liira 
God rr .y be said to walk and to dwell in him, with 



140 ON THE DISSIPATION OF LARGE CITfEft. 

you there is an evil visitant, who has taken up hin 
abode in your heart, and lodges there either iu a 
state of dormancy or of action, according to circum- 
stances; that, while with him the purpose is honestly 
proceeded on, of doing nothing which God dis- 
approves, with you there is a purpose not only 
different, but opposite, of doing something which 
he disapproves. On this single difference is sus- 
pended not a question of degree, but a question 
of kind. There are presented to us not two hues 
of the same colour, but two colours, just as broadly 
contrasted with each other as light and darkness. 
And such is the state of the alternative between 
a partial and an unreserved obedience, that while 
CJod imperatively claims the one as his due, He 
looks on the other as an expression of defiance 
against Him, and against His sovereignty.. 

It is the very same in civil government. A 
man renders himself an outcast by one act of dis- 
obedience. He does not need to accumulate upon 
himself the guilt of all the higher atrocities in crime, 
ere he forfeits his life to the injured laws of his 
country. By the perpetration of any one of them 
is the whole vengeance of the state brought to bear 
upon his person ; and sentence of death is pro- 
nounced on a single murder, or forgery, or act of 
violent depredation. 

And let us ask you just to reflect on the tone 
and spirit of that man towards his God, who would 
palliate, for example, the vices of dissipation to 
which he is addicted, by alleging his utter exemp- 
tion from the vices of dishonesty, to which he is 
not addicted. Just think of the real disposition 



0» THE DISSIPATION OF LARGE CITIES. 141 

and character or his soul, who can say, " I will 
please God, but only when, in so doing, I also 
please myself ; or I will do homage to His law, bu*i. 
just in those instances by which I honour the rights, 
and fulfil the expectations, of society ; or I will be 
decided by His opinion of the right and the wrong, 
but just when the opinion of my neighbourhood lends 
its powerful and effective confirmation. But in 
other cases, when the matter is reduced to a bare 
question between man and God, when He is the 
single party I have to do with, when His will and 
His wrath are the only elements which enter into 
the deliberation, when judgment, and eternity, and 
the voice of him who speaketh from heaven are 
the only considerations at issue — then do I feel 
myself at greater liberty, and 1 shall take my own 
way, and walk in the counsel of mine own heart, 
and after the sight of my own eyes." O ! be 
assured, that when all this is laid bare on the day 
of reckoning, and the discerner of the heart pro- 
nounces upon it, and such a sentence is to be given, 
as will make it manifest to the consciences of all 
assembled, that true and righteous are the judg- 
ments of God — there is many a creditable man 
who has passed through the world with the plaudits 
and the testimonies of all his fellows, and without 
one other Haw upon his reputation but the very 
slender one of certain harmless foibles, and certain 
good-humoured peculiarities, who, when brought 
to the bar of account, will stand convicted there of 
having made a divinity of his own will, and spent 
his days in practical and habitual atheism. 

And this argument is not ac all affected by liie 



142 ON THE DISSIPATION OF LARGE CITIES. 

actual state of sinfulness and infirmity into which 
we have fallsn. It is true, even of saints on earth, 
that they commit sin. But to be overtaken in 
a fault is one thing ; to commit that fault with 
the deliberate consent of the mind is another. 
There is in the bosom of every true Christian a 
strenuoiis principle of resistance to sin, and it 
belongs to the very essence of the principle that it 
is resistance to all sin. It admits of no voluntary 
indulgence to one sin more than to another. Sucli 
an indulgence would not only change the character 
of what may be called the elementary principle 
of regeneration, but would destroy it altogether. 
The man who has entered on a course of Christian 
discipleship, carries on an unsparing and universal 
war with all iniquity. He has chosen Christ for 
his alone master, and he struggles against the 
ascendancy of every other. It is his sustained and 
habitual exertion in following after Him to forsake 
all ; so that if his performance were as complete 
as his endeavour, you would not merely see a con- 
formity to some of the precepts, but a conformity 
to the whole law of God. At all events, the 
endeavour is an honest one, and so far successful, 
that sin has not the dominion ; and sure we are, 
that, in such a state of things, the vices of dissipa- 
tion can have no existence. These vices can be 
more effectually shunned, and more effectually 
surmounted for example, than the infirmities of an 
unhappy temper. So that, if dissipation still 
attaches to the character, and appears in the con- 
i^ut of any individual, we know not a more decisive 
evidence of the state of that individual as being 






ON THE DISSIPATION OF LAnGE CITIES. 143 

one of the many who crowd the broad way that 
leadeth to destruction. We look no further to 
make out our estimate of his present condition as 
being that of a rebel, and of his future prospect as 
being that of spending an eternity in hell. There 
is no halting between two opinions in this matter. 
The man who enters a career of dissipation tlirows 
down the gauntlet of defiance to his God. The 
man who persists in this career keeps on the ground 
of hostility against him. 

Let us now endeavour to trace the origin, the 
progress, and the effects, of a life of dissipation. 

First. Then it may be said of a very great 
number of young, on their entrance into the business 
of the world, that they have not been enough 
fortified against its seducing influences by their 
]}revious education at home. Generally speaking, 
they come out from the habitation of their parents 
unarmed and unprepared for the contest which 
awaits them. If the spirit of this world's morality 
reign in their own family, then it cannot be, that 
that their introduction into a more public scene 
of life will be very strictly guarded against those 
vices on which the world placidly smiles, or at least 
regards with sUent toleration. They may have 
been told, in early boyhood, of the infamy of a lie 
They may have had the virtues of punctuality, and 
of economy, and of regular attention to business, 
pressed upon their observation. They may have 
heard a uniform testimony on the side of good 
behaviour, up to the standard of such current 
moralities as obtain in their neighbourhood ; and 
this, we are ready to admit, may include in it a 



144 ON THE DISSIPATION OF LARGE CITIES. 

testimony against all such excesses of dissipation 
as would unfit them for the prosecution of this 
world's interests. But let us ask, whether there 
are not parents, who, after they have carried the 
work of discipline thus far, forbear to carry it any 
farther ; who, while they would mourn over it as a 
family trial should any son of theirs fall a victim 
to excessive dissipation, yet are willing to tolerate 
the lesser degrees of it ; who, instead of deciding 
the question on the alternative of his heaven or his 
hell, are satisfied with such a measure of sobriety 
as will save him from ruin and disgrace in this life ; 
who, if they can only secure this, have no great 
objection to the moderate share he may take in this 
world's conformities ; who feel, that in this matter 
there is a necessity and a power of example against 
which it is vain to struggle, and which must be 
acquiesced in ; who deceive themselves with the 
fancied impossibility of stopping the evil in question 
—and say, that business must be gone through ; 
and that, in the prosecution of it, exposures must 
be made ; and that, for the success of it, a certain 
degree of accommodation to others must be 
observed ; and seeing that it is so mighty an 
object for one to widen the extent of his connex- 
ions, he must neither be very retired nor very 
peculiar — nor must his hours of companionship be 
too jealously watched or inquired into — nor must 
we take him too strictly to task about engagements, 
and acquaintances, and expenditure — nor must we 
forget, that while sobriety has its time and its 
season in one period of life, indulgence has its 
season in another ; and we may fetch from the 



ON THE DISSIPATION OF LARGE CITIES. 145 

recollected follies of our own youth, a lesson of 
connivance for the present occasion ; and alto- 
jifettier there is no help for it ; and it appears to us, 
that absolutely and totally to secure him from ever 
enrering upon scenes of dissipation, you must 
absolutely and totally withdraw him from the world, 
and surrender all his prospects of advancement, 
and give up the object of such a provision for our 
famiUes as we feel to be a first and most impor- 
tant concern with us. 

'* Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his 
righteousness," says the Bible, '* and all other 
things shall be added unto you." This is the 
promise which the faith of a Christian parent will 
retjt upon ; and in the face of every hazard to the 
worldly interests of his offspring, will he bring them 
up in the strict nurture and admonition of the 
Lord ; and he will loudly protest against iniquity, 
in all its degrees, and in all its modifications; and 
while the power of discipline remains with him, will 
it ever be exerted on the side of pure, faultless, 
undeviatiug obedience ; and he will tolerate no 
exception whatever ; and he will brave all that 
looks formidable in singularity, and all that looks 
menacing in separation from the custom and coun- 
tenance of the world; and feeling that his main 
concern is to secure for himself and for his family 
a place in the city which hath foundations, will he 
spurn all the maxims, and all the plausibilities, of 
a contagious neighbourhood away from him. He 
knows the price of his Christianity, and it is that 
he must break off conformity with the world — nor 
for any paltry advantage which it has to offer, wij] 

VOL. VI. a 



146 ON THE DISS;?ATION OF LARGC CITIES. 

he compromise the eternity of his children. And 
let us tell the parents ot another spirit, and another 
principle, that they are as good as incurring the 
guilt of a human sacrifice ; that they are oftering 
up their children at the shrine of an idol ; that 
Jhey are parties in provoking the wrath of God 
against them here ; and on the day when that wrath 
is to be revealed, shall they hear not only the moati- 
ings of their despair, but the outcries of their 
bitterest execration. On that day, the glance of 
reproach from their own neglected offspring will 
throw a deeper shade of wretchedness over the 
dark and boundless futurity that lies before them. 
And if, at the time when prophets rung the tid- 
ings of God's displeasure against the people of 
Israel, it was denounced as the foulest of all their 
abominations that they caused their children to 
pass through the fire unto Moloch — know ye 
parents, who, in placing your children on some 
road to gainful employment, have placed them 
without a sigh in the midst of depravity, so near 
and so surrounding, that, without a miracle, they 
must perish, you have done an act of idolatry to 
the God of this world ; you have commanded your 
household, after you, to worship him as the great 
divinity of their lives ; and you have caused your 
children to make their approaches unto his pre- 
sence — and, in so doing, to pass through the fire 
of such temptations as have destroyed them. 

We do not wish to offer you an overcharged 
picture on this melancholy subject. What we now 
say is not applicable to all. Even in the mout 
corrupt and crowded of our cities, parents are to 



ON THE DISSIPATION OF L.ARGE CITIES. 147 

be found, who nobly dare the surrender of every 
vain and flattering illusion, rather than surrender 
the Christianity of their children. And what is 
still more affecting, over the face of the country do 
we meet with such parents, who look on this world 
as a passage to another, and on all the members of 
their household as fellow-travellers to eternity along 
with them ; and who, in this true spirit of believers, 
feel the salvation of their children to be, indeed, 
the burden of their best and their dearest interest; 
and who, by prayei-, and precept, and example, 
have strenuously laboured with their souls, from 
the earliest light of their understanding ; and have 
taught them to tremble at the way of evil-doers, 
and to have no fellowship with those who keep not 
the commandments of God — nor is there a day 
more sorrowful in the annals of this pious family, 
than when the course of time has brought them 
onwards to the departure of their eldest boy — and 
he must bid adieu to his native home, with all the 
peace, and all the simplicity, which abound in it — . 
and as he eyes in fancy the distant town whither 
he is going, does he shrink as from the thought of 
an unknown wilderness — and it is his firm purpose 
to keep aloof from the dangers and the prc-igacies 
which deform it — and, should sinners offer to entice 
him, not to consent, and never, never, to forget the 
lessons of a father's vigilance, the tenderness of a 
mother's prayers. 

Let us now, in the next place, pass from that 
state of things which obtains among the young at 
their outset into the world, and take a look of that 
state of things which obtains after they have got 



148 ON THE DISSIPATION OF LARGE CITIES. 

fairly introduced into it — when the childrer. of the 
ungodly, and the children of the religious, meet on 
one common arena — when business associates them 
together in one chamber, and the omnipotence of 
custom lays it upon them all to meet together at 
periodic intervals, and join in the same parties, and 
the same entertainments — when the yearly impor- 
tation of youths from the country falls in with that 
assimilating mass of corruption which has got so firm 
and so rooted an establishment in the town — when 
the frail and unsheltered delicacies of the timid boy 
have to stand a rude and a boisterous contest with 
the hardier depravity of those who have gone 
before him — when ridicule, and example, and the 
vain words of a delusive sophistry, which palliates 
in his hearing the enormity of vice, are all brought 
to bear upon his scruples, and to stifle the remorse 
he might feel when he casts his principle and his 
purity away from him — when, placed as he is in a 
land of strangers, he finds, that the tenure of 
acquaintanceship, with nearly all around him, is, 
that he render himself up in a conformity to their 
doings — when a voice, like the voice of protecting 
friendship, bids him to the feast ; and a welcome, 
like the welcome of honest kindness, hails his 
accession to the society ; and a spirit, like the 
spirit of exhilarating joy, animates the whole scene 
of hospitality before him ; and hours of rapture roll 
successively away on the wings of merriment and 
jocularity, and song; and after the homage of 
many libations has been rendered to honour, and 
fellowship, and patriotism, impurity is at length 
proclaimed in full and open cry, as one presiding 



ON THE DISSIPATION OF LARGE CITIES. 149 

divinity, at the board of their social entertain^ 
ment. 

And now it remains to compute the general 
result of a process, which we assert of the vast 
majority of our young, on their way to manhood, 
that they have to undergo. The result is, that 
the vast majority are initiated into all the practices, 
and describe the full career of dissipation. Those 
who have imbibed from their fathers the spirit of 
this world's morality, are not sensibly arrested in 
this career, either by the opposition of their own 
friends, or by the voice of their own conscience. 
Those who have imbibed an opposite spirit, and 
have brought it into competition with an evil world, 
and have at length yielded, have done so, we may 
well suppose, with many a sigh, and many a 
struggle, and many a. look of remembrance on 
those former years when they were taught to lisp the 
yrayer of infancy, and were trained in a mansion 
of piety to a reverence for God, and for all his 
ways ; and, even still, will a parent's parting advice 
haunt his memory, and a letter from the good old 
man revive the sensibilities which at one time 
guarded and adorned him ; and, at times, will the 
transient gleam of remorse lighten up its agony 
within him ; and when he contrasts the profaneness 
and depravity of his present companions, with the 
sacredness of all he ever heard or saw in his father's 
dwellings it will almost feel as if conscience were 
again to resume her power, and the revisiting spirit 
of God to call him back again from the paths of 
wickedness ; and on his restless bed will the images 
of guilt conspire to disturb him, and the terrors of 



150 ON THE DISSIPATION OF LARGE CITIES. 

punishment offer to scare him away ; and many 
will he the dreary and dissatisfied intervals when 
he shall he forced to acknowledge, that, in bartering 
his soul for the pleasures of sin, he has bartered 
the peace and enjoyment of the woild along with 
it. But, alas! the entanglements of companionship 
have got hold of him ; and the inveteracy of habit 
tyrannizes over all his purposes ; and the stated 
opportunity again comes round ; and the loud 
laugh of his partners in guilt chases, for another 
season, all his despondency away from him ; and 
the infatuation gathers upon him every month; 
and a hardening process goes on within his heart; 
and the deceitfulness of sin grows apace ; and he 
at length becomes one of the sturdiest and most 
unrelenting of her votaries ; and he, in his turn, 
strengthens the conspiracy that is formed against 
the morals of a new generation ; and all the inge- 
nuous delicacies of other days are obliterated ; and 
he contracts a temperament of knowing, hackneyed, 
unfeeling depravity: and thus the mischief is trans- 
mitted from one year to another, and keeps up the 
guilty history of every place of crowded population. 
And let us here speak one word to those seniors 
in depravity — those men who give to the corruption 
of acquaintances, who are younger than themselves, 
their countenance and their agency ; who can 
initiate them without a sigh in the mysteries of 
guilt, and care not though a parent's hope should 
wither and expire under the contagion of their 
ruffian example. It is only upon their own con- 
version that we can speak to them the pardon of 
the gospel. It is only if they themselves ar« 



ON THE DISSIPATION OF LARGE CITIES. 151 

washed, and sanctified, and justified, that we can 
warrant their personal deliverance from the wrath 
that is to come. But under all the concealment 
^vhich rests on the futurities of God's administra- 
tion, we know, that thei-e are degrees of suffering 
in hell — and that, while some are beaten with few 
stripes, others are beaten with man}-. And surely, 
if they who turn many to righteousness shall shine 
as the stars for ever and ever, we may he well 
assured, that they who patronize the cause of 
iniquity — they who can beckon others to that way 
which leadeth on to the chambers of death — they 
who can aid and witness, without a sigh, the 
extinction of youthful modesty — surely, it may 
well be said of such, that on them a darker frown 
will fall from the judgment-seat, and through 
eternity will they have to bear the pains of a fiercer 
indignation. 

Having thus looked to the commencement of a 
course of dissipation, and to its progress, let us now, 
in the third place, look to its usual termination. 
We speak not at present of the coming death, and 
of the coming judgment, but of the change which 
takes place on many a votary of licentiousness, 
when he becomes what the world calls a reformed 
man ; and puts on the decencies of a sober and 
domestic establishment ; and bids adieu to the 
pursuits and the profligacies of youth, not because 
he has repented of them, but because he has out- 
lived them. You all perceive how this may be 
done without one movement of the heart, or of the 
understanding, towards God — that it is done by 
many, though duty to him be not in all theii 



152 ON THE DISSIPATION OF LARGE CITIES. 

thoughts — that the change, in this case, is not from 
the idol of pleasure unto God, but only from one 
idol to another — and that, after the whole of this 
boasted transformation, we may still behold the 
same body of sin and of death, and only a new- 
complexion thrown over it. There may be the 
putting on of sobriety, but there is no putting on 
of godliness. It is a common and an easy transi- 
tion to pass from one kind of disobedience to 
another, but it is not so easy to give up that 
rebelliousness of the heart which lies at the root of 
all disobedience. It may be easy, after the wonted 
course of dissipation is ended, to hold out another 
aspect altogether in the eye of acquaintances ; but 
it is not so easy to recover that shock, and that 
overthrow, which the religious principle sustains, 
when a man first enters the world, and surrenders 
himself to the power of its enticements. Such 
were some of you, says the Apostle, but ye are 
washed, and sanctified, and justified. Our reformed 
man knows not the meaning of such a process ; and, 
most assuredly, has not at all realized it in the 
history of his own person. We will not say what 
new object he is running after. It may be wealth, 
or ambition, or philosophy ; but it is nothing con- 
nected with the interest of his soul. It bears no 
reference whatever to the concerns of that great 
relationship which obtains between the creature 
and the Creator. The man has withdrawn, and 
perhaps for ever, from the scenes of dissipation, 
and has betaken himself to another way — but still 
it is his own way. It is not the will or the way of 
God that he is ^'et caring for. Such a man may 



ON THE DISSIPATION OF LARGE CITIES. 153 

ijid adieu to profligacy in his own person. Bui 
he lifts up the hght of his countenance on the 
profligacy of others. He gives it the whole weight 
and authority of his connivance. He wields, we 
will say it, such an instrumentality of seduction 
over the young, as, though not so alarming, is far 
more dangerous than the undisguised attempts ot 
those who are the immediate agents of corruption. 
The formal and deliberate conspiracy of those who 
club together, at stated terms of companionship, 
may be all seen, and watched, and guarded against. 
But how shall we pursue this conspiracy into its 
other ramifications? How shall we be able to 
neutralise that insinuating poison which distils from 
the lips of grave and respectable citizens ? How 
siiall we be able to dissipate that gloss which is 
tiirown by the smile of elders and superiors over 
the sins of forbidden indulgence? How can we 
disarm the bewitching sophistry which lies in all 
tiiese evident tokens of complacency, on the part 
of advanced and reputable men ? How is it 
possible to tract the progress of this sore evil, 
throughout all the business and intercourse of 
society ? How can we stem the influence of evil 
communications, when the friend, and the patron, 
and the man who has cheered and signalized us by 
his polite invitations, turns his own family-table 
into a nursery of licentiousness? How can we 
but despair of ever witnessing on earth a pure and 
a holy generation, when even parents will utter 
their polluting levities in the hearing of their own 
children ; and vice, and humour, and gaiety, are 
all indiscriminately blended into one conversation ; 
g2 



154 ON THE DISSIPATION OF LARGE CITIES. 

and a loud laugh, from the initiated and the 
uninitiated in profligacy, is ever ready to flatter and 
to regale the man who can thus prostitute his 
powers of entertainment? O! for an arm of strength 
to demolish this firm and far spread compact of 
iniquity ; and for the power of some such piercing 
and prophetic voice, as might convince our re- 
formed men of the haleful influence they cast 
hehind them on the morals of the succeeding 
generation. 

We, at the same time, have our eye perfectly 
open to that great external improvement which has 
taken place, of late years, m the manners of society. 
There is not the same grossness of conversation. 
There is not the same impatience for the withdraw- 
ment of him, who, asked to grace the outset of an 
assembled party, is compelled, at a certain step in 
the process of conviviality, l)y the obligations of pro- 
fessional decency, to retire from it. There is not so 
frequent an exaction of this as one of the established 
proprieties of social or of fashionable life. And if 
such an exaction was ever laid by the omnipotence 
of custom on a minister of Christianity, it is such 
an exaction as ought never, never, to be complied 
with. It is not for him to lend the sanction of 
his presence to a meeting with which he could not 
sit to its final termination. It is not for him to 
stand associated, for a single hour, with an assem- 
blage of men who begin with hypocrisy, and end 
with downright blackguardism. It is not for him 
to watch the progress of the coming ribaldry, and 
to hit the well selected moment when talk, and 
turbulence, and boisterous merriment, are on tJho 



ON THE DISSIPATION OF LARGE CITIES. 15 

eve of bursting forth upon the company, and 
carrying them forward to the full acme and uproar 
of their enjoyment. It is quite in vain to say, that 
he has only sanctified one part of such an enter- 
ainment. He has as good as given his connivance 
to the whole of it, and left behind him a discharge 
in full of all its abominations ; and, therefore, be 
they who they may, whether they rank among the 
proudest aristocracy of our land, or are chariotted 
in splendour along, as the wealthiest of the citizens, 
it is his part to keep as purely and indignantly 
aloof from such society as this, as he would 
from the vilest and most debasing associations ol 
profligacy. 

And how the important question comes to be 
put : what is the likeliest way of setting up a 
barrier against this desolating torrent of corruption, 
into which there enter so many elementsof power and 
strength, that, to the general eye, it looks altogether 
irresistible? It is easier to give a negative, than an 
affirmative answer to this question. And, therefore, 
it shall be our first remark, that the mischief 
never will be effectually combated by any expe- 
dient separate from the growth and the transmission 
of personal Christianity throughout the land. If 
no addition be made to the stock of religious prin- 
ciple in a country, then the profligacy of a country 
will make its obstinate stand against all the 
mechanism of the most skilful, and plausible, and 
well looking contrivances. It must not be disguised 
from you, that it does not lie within the compass 
either of prisons or penitentiaries to work any 
sensible abatement on the wickedness of our exiai 



156 ON THE DISSIPATION OF LiRGE CITIES. 

ing generation. The operation must' be of a 
preA^entive, rather than of a corrective tendency. 
It must be brought to bear upon boyhood ; and 
be kept up through that whole period of random 
exposures through which it has to run, on its way 
to an estabhshed condition in society ; and a high 
tone of moral purity must be infused into the bosom 
of many individuals ; and their agency will effect, 
through the channels of family and social connexion, 
what never can be effected by any framework of 
artificial regulations, so long as the spirit and 
character of society remain what they are. In 
other wordsn ,he progress of reformation will 
never be sensibly carried forward beyond the 
progress of personal Christianity in the world ; and, 
therefore, the question resolves itself into the 
likeliest method of adding to the number of Chris- 
tian parents who may fortify the principles of their 
children at their first outset in life — of adding to 
the number of Christian young men, who might 
nobly dare to be singular, and to perform the angelic 
office of guardians and advisers to those who are 
younger than themselves — of adding to the number 
of Christians in middle and advanced life, who 
might, as far as in them lies, alter the general 
feeling and countenance of society ; and bliint the 
force of that tacit but most seductive testimony, 
which has done so much to throw a palliative veil 
over the guilt of a life of dissipation. 

Such a question cannot be entered upon, al 
present, in all its bearings, and in all its generality. 
And we must, therefore, simply satisfy ourselves 
with the object, that as we have attempted already 



ON THE DISSIPATION OF LARGE CITIES. 157 

to reproach the indifference of parents, and to 
reproach the unfeehng depravity of those young 
men who scatter their pestilential levities around 
the whole circle of their companionship, we may 
now shortly attempt to lay upon the men of middle 
and advanced life, in general society, their share of 
responsibility for the morals of the rising generation. 
For the promotion of this great cause, it is not at 
all necessary to school them into any nice or 
exquisite contrivances. Could we only give them 
a desire towards it, and a sense of obligation, they 
would soon find their own way to the right exercise 
of their own influence in forwarding the interests of 
purity and virtue among the young. Could we 
only affect their consciences on this point, there 
would be almost no necessity whatever to guide or 
enlighten their understanding. Could we only 
get them to be Christians, and to carry their 
Christianity into their business, they would then 
feel themselves invested with a guardianship ; and 
that time, and pains, and attention, ought to be 
given to the fulfilment of its concerns. It is quite 
in vain to ask, as if there was any mystery, or any 
helplessness about it, " What can they do ?" For, 
is it not a fact most palpably obvious, that much 
can be done even by the mere power of example ? 
Or might not the master of any trading establish- 
ment send the pervading influence of his own 
principles among some, at least, of the servants 
and auxiliaries who belong to it ? Or can he, in 
no degree whatever, so select those who are 
admitted, as to ward off much contamination from 
the branches of his employ ? Or might not he so 



158 ON THE DISSIPATION OF LARG£ CITIES. 

deal out his encouragement to the deserving, as to 
confirm them in all their purposes of sobriety? 
Or might not he interpose the shield of his counte^ 
nance and his testimony between a struggling 
youth and the ridicule of his acquaintances? Or, by 
the friendly conversation of half an hour, might not 
he strengthen within him every principle of virtuous 
resistance ? By these, and by a thousand other 
expedients, which will readily suggest themselves 
to him who has the good will, might not a healing 
water be sent forth through the most corrupted of 
all our establishments ; and it be made safe for the 
unguarded young to officiate in its chambers ; and 
it be made possible to enter upon the business of 
the world without entering on such a scene of 
temptation, as to render almost inevitable the vice 
of the world, and its impiety, and its final and ever- 
lasting condemnation ? Would Christians only be 
open and intrepid, and carry their religion into 
their merchandise and furnish us with a single 
hundred of sucn houses in this city, where the care 
and character of the master formed a guarantee 
for the sobriety of all his dependents, it would be 
like the clearing out of a piece of cultivated ground 
in the midst of a frightful wilderness ; and parents 
would know whither they could repair with confi- 
dence for the settlement of their offspring ; and 
we should behold, what is mightily to be desired, 
a line of broad and visible demarcation between 
the church and the world; and an interest so 
precious as the immortality of children, would no 
longer be left to the play of such fortuitous elements, 
a» operated at random throughout the confused 



OH THE DISSIPATION OF LARGE CITIES. 159 

mass of a mingled and indiscriminate society. And 
thus, the pieties of a father's bouse might bear to 
be transplanted even into the scenes of ordinary 
business ; and instead of withering, as they do at 
present, under a contagion which spreads in every 
direction, and fills up the whole face of the com- 
munity, they might flourish in that moral region 
which was occupied by a peculiar people, and 
which they had reclaimed from a world that lietb 
in wickedness. 



160 TITIATING INFLUENCE OF TBS HI6HER 



DISCOURSE VII. 

ON THE VITIATING INFLUENCE OF THE 
HIGHER UPON THE LOWER ORDERS OP 
SOCIETY. 



** Then said lie unto the disciples, It is impossible but that oiTences 
will come : but wo unto him through whom they come ! It 
were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, 
and he cast into the sea, than that he should offend one of these 
little ones."— Luke xvii. 1, 2. 

To offend another, according to the common 
acceptation of the words, is to displease him. 
Now, this is not its acceptation in the verse before 
us, nor in several other verses of the New Testa- 
ment. It were coming nearer to the scriptural 
meaning of the term, had we, instead of offence 
and offending, adopted the terms, scandal and 
scandalizing. But the full signification of -the 
phrase, to offend another, is to cause him to fall 
from the faith and obedience of the gospel. It 
may be such a falling away as that a man recovers 
himself — like the disciples, who were all offended 
in Christ, and forsook him ; and, after a season of 
separation, were at length re-established in their 
discipleship. Or it may be such a falling away as 
that there is no recovery — like those in the gospel of 
John, who, offended by the sayings of our Saviour, 
went back, and walked no more with him. If you 
put such a stumbling-block in the way of a neigh- 
bour, who is walking on a course of Christian 



UPON THK LOWKR ORDBflS OF SOCIETY. 161 

discipleship, as to make him fall, you offend him. 
It IS in this sense that our Saviour uses the word, 
when he speaks of your own right hand, or your 
own right eye, offending you. They may do so, 
by giving you an occasion to fall. And what is 
here translated offend, is, in the first epistle to the 
Corinthians, translated, to make to offend; where 
Paul says, " If meat make my brother to offend, 
I will eat no more flesh while the world standeth, 
lest I make my brother to offend." 

The little ones to whom our Saviour alludes, 
in this passage, he elsewhere more fully parti- 
cularizes, by telling us, that they are those who 
believe in him. There is no call here for entering 
into any controversy about the doctrine of per- 
severance. It is not necessary, either for' the 
purpose of explaining, or of giving force to the 
practical lesson of the text now submitted to you. 
We happen to be as much satisfied with the doctrine, 
that he who hath a real faith in the gospel of Christ 
will never fall away, as we are satisfied with the 
truth of any identical proposition. If a professing 
disciple do, in fact, fall away, this is a phenomenon 
which might be traced to an essential defect of 
principle at the first; which proves, in fact, that 
he made the mistake of one principle for another ; 
and that, while he thought he had the faith, it was 
not that very faith of the New Testament which is 
unto salvation. There might have been the sem- 
blance of a work of grace, without its reality. 
Such a work, if genuinely begun, will be carried 
onwards even unto perfection. But this is a point 
on which it is not at all necessary, at present, for 



162 VITIATING INFLUEVCr- 07 THE HIGHER 

US to dogmatize. We are led, by the text, to 
expatiate on the guilt of that one man who has 
wrecked the interest of another man's eternity. 
Now, it may be very true, that if the second haa 
actually entered within the strait gate, it is not in 
the power of the tirst, with all liis artifices, and all 
his temptations, to draw him out again. But 
instead of having entered the gate, he may only be 
on the road that leads to it ; and it is enough, 
amid the uncertainties which, in this life, hang 
over the question of — who are really believers, and 
who are not ? tliat it is not known in which of 
these two conditions the little one is ; and that, 
therefore, to seduce him from obedience to the will 
of Christ, may, in fact, be to arrest his progress 
towards Christ, and to drav\ him back unto the 
perdition of his soul. The whole guilt of the text 
may be realized by him who keeps back another 
from the church, where he might have heard, and 
heard with acceptance, the word of life whi(;h he 
has not yet accepted ; or by him, whose influence 
or whose example detains, in the entanglement of 
any one sin, the acquaintance who is meditating 
an outset on the path of decided Christianity — 
seeing, that every such outset will land in dis- 
appointment those who, in the act of following after 
Christ, do not forsake all ; or by him who tampers 
with the conscience of an apparently zealous and 
confirmed disciple, so as to seduce him into some 
;iabitual sin, either of neglect or of performance 
— seeing, that the individual who, but for this 
seduction, might have cleaved fully unto the Lord, 
and turned out a prosperous and decided Christian, 



UPON THE LOWEU ORDERS OF SOCIETY. 163 

has been led to put a good conscience away from 
him — and so, by making shipwreck of his faith, 
has proved to the woi'ld, that it was not the fa.'th 
■which could obtain the victory. It is true, that 
it is not possible to seduce the elect. But even 
this snggestion, perverse and unjust as it would be 
in its application, is not generally present ,to the 
mind of him who is guilty of the attempt to seduce, 
or of the act which carries a seducing influence 
along with it. The guilt with which he is charge- 
able, is that of an indifference to the spiritual and 
everlasting fate of others. He is wilfully the 
occasion of causing those who are the little ones, 
or, for any thing he knows, might have been the 
little ones of Christ, to fall ; and it is against him 
that our Saviour, in the text, lifts not a cool but 
an impassioned testimony. It is of him that He 
utters one of the most severe and solemn denun- 
ciations of the gospel. 

If this text were thoroughly pursued into its 
manifold applications, it would be found to lay a 
weight of fearful responsibility upon us all. We 
are here called upon, not to work out our own 
salvation, but to compute the reflex influence of all 
our works, and of all our ways, on the principles 
of others. And when one thinks of the mis- 
chief which this influence might spread around it, 
even from Christians of chiefest reputation ; when 
one thinks of the readiness of man to take shelter 
in the example of an acknowledged superior : when 
one thinks that some inconsistency of ours might 
seduce another into such an imitation as overbears 
the reproa(^hes of his own conscience, and as, by 



1C4 VITIATING INFLUENCE OF THE HIGHER 

vitiating the singleness of iiis eye, makes the whole 
of his body, instead of being full of light to be full 
of darkness ; when one takes the lesson along with 
him into the various conditions of life he may be 
called by Providence to occupy, and thinks, that 
if, either as a parent surrounded by his family, or 
as a master by the members of his establishment, 
or as a citizen by the many observers of his neigh- 
bourhood around him, he shall either speak such 
words, or do such actions, or administer his affairs 
in such a way as is unworthy of his high and im- 
mortal destination, that then a taint of corruption 
is sure to descend from such an exhibition, upon 
the immortals who are on every side of him ; when 
one thinks of himself as the source and tlie centre 
of a contagion which might bring a blight upon 
the graces and the prospects of other souls besides 
his own — surely this is enough to supply him with 
a reason why, in working out his own personal 
salvation, he should do it with fear, and with watch- 
fulness, and with much trembling. 

But we are now upon the ground of a higher 
and more delicate conscientiousness, than is gener- 
ally to be met with. Whereas, our object, at 
present, is to expose certain of the grosser offences 
vvhicl) abound in society, aiid which spread a most 
dangerous and ensnaring influence among the 
individuals wiio compose it. To this we have been 
insensibly led, by the topics of that discourse which 
we addressed to you on a former occasion ; and 
M hen it fell in our way to animadvert on the magni- 
tude of that man's guilt, who, either by his example, 
or his connivance, or his direct and formal tuition, 



UPON THE LOWER OIIDEUS OF SOCIETY. 165 

can speed the entrance of the yet unpractised young 
on a career of dissipation. And whether he i)e a 
parent, who, trenched in this world's maxims, can, 
without a struggle, and without a sigh, leave his 
helpless offspring to take their random and unpro- 
tected way through this world's conformities : or 
whether he be one of those seniors in depravity, 
who can cheer on his more youthful companion to 
a surrender of all those scruples, and all thorto 
delicacies, which have hitherto adorned him ; or 
whether he be a more aged citizen, who, having 
run the wonted course of intemperance, can cast 
an approving eye on the corruption throughout ixll 
its stages, and give a tenfold force to all its allure- 
ments by setting up the authority of grave and 
reformed manhood upon its side ; in each of these 
characters do we see an offence that is pregnant 
with deadliest mischief to the principles of the 
rising generation : and while we are told by our 
text, that, for such offences^ there exists some deep 
and mysterious necessity — insomuch, thatitisimpos- 
gible but that offences must come — yet, let us not 
forget to urge on every one sharer in this work of 
moral contamination, that never does the meek and 
gentle Saviour speak in terms more threatening, 
or more reproachful, than when he speaks of the 
enormity of such misconduct. There cannot, in 
truth be a grosser outrage committed on the order 
of God's administration, than that which he is in the 
habit of inflicting. There cannot, suiely, be a 
director act of rebellion, than that which multiplies 
the adherents of its own cause, and which swells the 
hosts of the rebellious. There cannot be made to 



J66 VITIATING INFLUENV^E OF THE HIGHEft 

rest a feller condemnation on the head of iniquity, 
than that which is sealed by the blood of its own 
victims, and its own proselytes. Nor should we 
wonder when that is said of such an agent for 
iniquity which is said of the betrayer of our Lord. 
It were better for him, that he had not been born. 
It were better for him, now that he is born, could 
he be committed back again to deep annihilation. 
Rather than that he should offend one of these little 
ones, it were better for him that a millstone were 
hanged about his neck, and he were cast into the sea. 
This is one^case of such offences as are adverted 
to in the text. Another and still move specific 
is beginning, we understand, to be exemplified in 
our own city, though it has not attained to the 
height or to the frequency at which it occurs in a 
neighbouring metropolis. We allude to the doing 
of week-day business upon the sabbath. We allude 
to that violence which is rudely offered to the feel- 
ings and the associations of sacredness, by those 
exactions that an ungodly master lays at times on 
his youthful dependents — when those hours whicl/ 
they wont to spend in church, they are called upou 
to spend in the counting-house — when that dyy, 
which ought to be a day of piety, is turned into a 
day of posting and of penmanship — when the rules of 
the decalogue are set aside, and utterly superseded 
by the rules of the great trading establishment ; 
and every thing is made to give way to the hurry- 
ing emergency of orders, and clearances, and the 
demands of instant correspondence. Such is the 
magnitude of this stumbling-block, that many ia 
the young man who has here fallen to rise no nioro 



UP<)N THE LOWER, ORDERS OF SOCIETY. 167 

thatj at this point of departure, he has so widened 

his distance from God, aS never, in fact, to return 
to Him — that, in this distressing contest between 
principle and necessity, the final blow has been 
given to his religious principles — that the master 
whom he serves, and under whom he earns his 
prevision for time, has here wrested the whole 
interest of his eternity away from him — that, from 
this moment, there gathers upon his soul the com- 
plexion of a hardier and more determined impiety 
— and conscience once stifled now speaks to him 
with a feebler voice — and the world obtains a 
firmer lodgement in his heart- — and, renouncing all 
his original tenderness about Sabbath, and Sabbath 
employments, he can now, with the thorough 
unconcern of a fixed and famiharized proselyte, 
keep equal pace by his fellows throughout every 
scene of profanation — and he who wont to tremble 
and recoil from the freedoms of irreligion with the 
sensibility of a little one, may soon become the 
most daringly rebellious of them all — and that 
Sabbath which he has now learned, at one time, 
to give to business, he, at another, gives to unhal- 
lowed enjoyments — and it is turned into a day of 
visits and excursions, given up to pleasure, and 
enlivened by all the mirth and extravagance of 
holiday — and, when sacrament is proclaimed from 
the city pulpits, he, the apt, the well trained disciple 
of his corrupt and corrupting superior, is the 
readiest to plan the amusements of the coming 
opportunity, and among the very foremost in the 
ranks of emigration — and though he may look back, 
Hi, times« to the Sabbath of his father's pious house, 



168 VITIATING INFLUENCE OF THE HIGHER 

yet the retrospect is aiwave! becoming dimmer, 
and at length it ceases to (listurD him — and thus 
the aUenation widens every year, till, wholly given 
over to impiety, he lives without God in the world. 

And were we asked to state the dimensions of 
that iniquity which stalks regardlessly, and at large, 
over the ruin of youthful principles — were we 
asked to find a place in the catalogue of guilt 
for a crime the atrocity of which is only equalled, 
we understand by its frequency — were we called 
to characterise the man who, so far from attempting 
one counteracting influence against the profligacy 
of his dependents, issues, from the chair of authority 
on which he sits, a commandment, in the direct 
face of a commandment from God — the man who 
has chartered impiety in the articles of agreement, 
and has vested himself with a property in that 
time which only belongs to the Lord of the Sab- 
bath — were we asked to look to the man who could 
thus overbear the last remnants of remorse in a 
struggling and unpractised bosom, and glitter in 
all the ensigns of a prosperity that is reared on the 
violated consciences of those who are beneath him 
— O! were the question put, to whom shall we 
liken such a man ? or, what is the likeness to wliich 
we can compare him ? we would say, that the guiit 
of him who trafficked on the highway, or trafficked 
on that outraged coast, from whose weeping 
families children were irrecoverably torn, was far 
outmeasured by the guilt which could thus frus- 
trate a father's fondest prayers, and trample under 
foot the hopes and the preparations of eternity. 

There is another way whereby, in the emploj 



UPON THE LOWER OKDERS OF SOCIETY. 169 

of a careless and unprincipled master, it is impos- 
sible but that offences must come. You know 
just as well as we do, that there are chicaneries in 
business ; and, so long as we forbear stating the 
precise extent of them, there is not an individual 
among you, who has a title to construe the assertion 
into an affronting charge of criminality against 
himself. But you surely know, as well as we, that 
the mercantile profession, conducted, as it often is, 
with the purest integrity, and laying no resistless 
necessity whatever for the surrender of principle on 
any of its members ; and dignified by some of the 
noblest exhibitions of untainted honour, and de- 
voted friendship, and magnificent generosity, that 
have ever been recorded of our nature ; — you know 
as well as we, that it was utterly extravagant, and 
in the face of all observation, to affirm, that each, 
and every one of its numerous competitors, stood 
clearly and totally exempted from the sins of an 
undue selfishness. And, accordingly, there are 
certain commodious falsehoods occasionally prac- 
tised in this department of human affairs. There 
are, for example, certain dexterous and gainful 
evasions, whereby the payers of tribute are enabled, 
at times, to make their escape from the eagle eye 
of the exactors of tribute. There are even cer- 
tain contests of ingenuity between individual traders, 
where, in the higgling of a very keen and anxious 
negotiation, each of them is tempted, in talking of 
offers and prices, and the reports of fluctuations in 
home and foreign markets, to say the things which 
are not. You must assuredly know, that these, and 
such as these, have introduced k certain quantity 

VOL. VI. H 



170 VITIATING INFLUENCE OF THE HIGHBK 

id what may be called shuffling, into the com 
niunications of the trading world — insonmch, that 
the simplicity of yea yea, and nay nay, is in some 
degree exploded ; and there is a kind of understood 
toleration established for certain modes of expres- 
sion, which could not, we are much afraid, stand 
the rigid scrutiny of the great day , and there is an 
abatement of confidence between man and man, 
implying, we doubt, such a proportionate abate- 
ment of truth, as goes to extend most fearfully the 
condemnation that is due to all liars, who shall 
have their part in the lake that burneth with fire 
and brimstone. And who can compute the effect 
of all this on the young and yet unpractised ob 
server? Who does not see, that it must go to 
reduce the tone of his principles; and to involve 
him in many a delicate struggle between the 
morality he has learned from his catechism, and the 
morality he sees in the counting-house ; and to 
obliterate, in Ms mind, the distinctions between 
right and wrong ; and, at length, to reconcile his 
conscience to a sin which, like every other, deserves 
the wrath and the curse of God ; and to make him 
tamper with a direct commandment, in such a way, 
as that falsehoods and frauds might be nothing 
more in his estimation, than the peccadilloes of an 
innocent compliance with the current practices and 
moralities of the world ? 'Here, then, is a point, 
at which the way of those who conform to this 
world, diverges from the way of those peculiar 
people who are redeemed from all iniquity, and are 
thoroughly furnished unto all good works. Here 
is a grievous occasion to fall. Here is a competi- 



UPON THE LOWER ORDERS OF SOCIETY. 171 

lion between the service of God and the service of 
Mammon. Here is the exhibition of another 
ofFeuce, and the bringing forward of another temp- 
tation, to those who are entering on the business 
of the world, little adverted to, we fear, by those 
who live in utter carelessness of their own souls, 
and never spend a thought or a sigh about the im- 
mortality of others — but most distinctly singled out 
by the text as a crime of foremost magnitude ia 
the eye of Him who judgeth righteously. 

And before we quit the subject of such offences 
as take place in ordinary trade, let us just advert 
to one example of it — not so much for the fre- 
[uency of its occurrence, as for the way that it 
stands connected in principle with a very general, 
and, we believe, a very mischievous offence, that 
takes place in domestic society. It is neither, 
you will observe, the avarice nor the selfishness of 
our nature, which forms the only obstruction in 
the way of one man dealing plainly with another. 
There is another obstruction, founded on a far 
more pleasing and amiable principle — even on that 
delicacy of feeling, in virtue of which, one man 
cannot bear to wound or to mortify another. It 
would require, for instance, a very rare, and, cer- 
tainly, not a very enviable degree of hardihood, to 
tell another, without pain, that you did not think 
him worthy of being trusted. And yet, in the 
doings of merchandise, this is the very trial of deli- 
cacy which sometimes offers itsolf. The man with 
whom you stand committed to as great an extent 
as you count to be advisable, would like, perhaps, 
to try your confi^dence in him, and his own credit 



172 VITIATING INFLUENCE OF THE HIGHER 

with you, a little farther ; and he comes back upon 
you with a fresh order ; and you secretly have no 
desire to link any more of your property with hii 
speculation ; and the difficulty is how to get the 
application in question disposed of; and you feel 
that by far the pleasantest way, to all the parties 
concerned, would be, to make him believe that you 
refuse the application not because you will not 
comply, but because you cannot — for that you 
have no more of the article he wants from you upon 
hand. And it would only be putting your own soul 
to hazard, did you personally and by yourself make 
this communication : but you select, perhaps, as 
the organ of it seme agent or underling of your 
establishment, who knows it to be false ; and to 
avoid the soreness of a personal encounter with 
the man whom you are to disappoint, you devolve 
the whole business of this lyi'ug apology upon 
others ; and thus do you continue to shift this 
oppressive burden away from you — or, in other 
words, to save your own delicacy, you count not, 
and you care not, about another's damnation. 

Now, what we call upon you to mark, is the 
perfect identity of principle between this case of 
making a brother to offend, and another case which 
obtains, we have heard, to a very great extent 
among the most genteel and opulent of our city 
families. In this case, you put a lie into the mouth 
of a dependent, and that, for the purpose of pro- 
tecting your substance from such an application as 
might expose it to hazard or diminution. In the 
second case, you put a lie into the mouth of a 
dependent, and that, for the purpose of protecting 



UPON THP. roWEP OTJUERS OF SOCIETY. 17S 

Vo'ir dme from such au encroachment as you would 
not feel to be convenient or agreeable. And, in 
both cases, you are led to hold out this offence by 
a certain delicacy of temperament, in virtue ot 
M'hich, you can neither give a man plainly to 
understand that you are not willing to trust him, 
nor can you give him to understand that you count 
his company to be an interruption. But, in both 
the one and the other example, look to the little 
account that is made of a brother's or of a sister's 
eternity ; behold the guilty task that is thus 
unmercifully laid upon one who is shortly to appear 
before the judgment-seat of Christ ; think of the 
entanglement which is thus made to beset the 
path of a creature who is unperishable. That, at 
the shrine of Mammon, such a bloody sacrifice 
should be rendered by some of his unrelenting 
votaries, is not to be wondered at ; but that the 
shrine of elegance and fashion should be bathed in 
blood — that soft and sentimental ladyship should 
put forth her hand to such an enormity — that she 
who can sigh so gently, and shed her graceful tear 
over the sufferings of others, should thus be 
accessary to the second and more awful death of 
her own domestics — that one who looks the mildest 
and the loveliest of human beings, should exact 
obedience to a mandate which carries wrath, and 
tribulation, and anguish, in its train — O ! how it 
should confirm every Christian in his defiance to 
the authority of fashion, and lead him to spurn at 
all its folly, and at all its worthlessness. 

And It Is quite in vain to sav. that the servant 
whom you thus employ as the deputy of your 



174 VITIATING INFLUENCE OF THE HIGHER 

falsehood, can possibly execute the commission 
without the conscience being at all tainted or defiled 
by it; that a simple cottage maid can so sophisticate 
the matter, as, without any violence to her original 
principles, to utter the language of what she assu- 
redly knows to be a downright lie ; that she, hum- 
ble and untutored soul, can sustain no injury when 
thus made to tamper with the plain English of these 
realms ; that she can at all satisfy herself, how, by 
the prescribed utterance of " not at home," she is 
not pronouncing such words as are substantially 
untrue, but merely using them in another and 
perfectly understood meaning — and which, according 
to their modern translation, denote, that the person 
of whom she is thus speaking, instead of being 
away from home, is secretly lurking in one of the 
most secure and intimate of its receptacles. You 
may try to darken and transform this piece of 
casuistry as you will ; and work up your own 
minds into the peaceable conviction that it is all 
right, and as it should be. But be very certain, 
that where the moral sense of your domestic is not 
already overthrown, there is, at least, one bosom 
within which you have raised a w ar of doubts and 
of difficulties ; and v, here, if the victory be on your 
side, it will be on the side of him w ho is the great 
enemy of righteousness. There is, at least, one per- 
son along the line of this conveyance of deceit, who 
condemneth herself in that w hich she alloweth ; 
who, in .the language of Paul, esteeming the 
practice to be unclean, to her will it be unclean ; 
who will perform her task with the offence of her 
pwn conscience, and to whom, therefore, it wiU 



UPON THE LOWER ORDERS OF SOCIETY. 75 

indeed be evil ; who cannot render obedience in this 
matter to her earthly superior, but by an act, in 
which she does not stand clear and unconscious of 
guilt before God ; and with whom, therefore, the 
sad consequence of what we can call nothing else 
than a barbarous combination against the principles 
and the prospects of the lower orders, is — that as 
she has not cleaved fully unto the Lord, and has 
not kept by the service of the one master, and has 
not forsaken all at His bidding, she cannot be the 
disciple of Christ. 

The aphorism, that he who offendeth in one 
point is guilty of all, tells us something more than 
of the way in which God adjudges condemnation 
to the disobedient. It also tells us of the way ia 
which one individual act of sinfulness operates upon 
our moral nature. It is altogether an erroneous 
view of the commandments, to look upon them as 
so many observances to which we are bound by as 
many distinct and independent ties of obligation — 
insomuch, that the transgression of one of them 
may be brought about by the dissolution of one 
separate tie, and may leave all the others with as 
entire a constraining influence and authority as 
before. The truth is, that the commandments 
ought rather to be looked upon as branching out 
from one great and general tie of obligation ; and 
that there is no such thing as loosening the hold of 
one of them upon the conscience, but by the 
unfastening of that tie which binds them all upon 
the conscience. So that if one member in the 
system of practical righteousness be made to suffer, 
all the other members suflfer along with it: and if 



176 VITIATING INFLUENCE OF THE HIGHER 

one decision of the moral sense be thwarted, tl;e 
organ of the moral sense is permanently impaired, 
and a leaven of iniquity infused into all its other 
decisions ; and if one suggestion of this inw-.rd 
monitor be stifled, a general shock is given to his 
authority over the whole man ; and if one of the 
least commandments of the law is left unfulfilled, 
the law itself is brought down from its rightful 
ascendancy ; and thus it is, that one act of disobe- 
dience may be the commencement and the token 
of a systematic universal rebelliousness of the 
heart against God. It is this which gives such a 
wide-wasting malignity to each of the separate 
offences on which we have now expatiated. It 
is this which so multiplies the means and the possi- 
bilities of corruption in the world. It is thus that, at 
every one point in the intercourse of human society, 
there may be struck out a fountain of poisonous 
emanation on all who approach it ; and think not, 
therefore, that under each of the examples we have 
given, we were only contending for the preservation 
of one single feature in the character of him who 
stands exposed to this world's offei: ;es. We felt it, 
in fact, to be a contest for his eternity ; and that 
the case involved in it his general condition wiih 
God ; and that he who leads the young into a 
course of dissipation — or that he who tampers 
V ith their impressions of Sabbath sacredness — or 
that he who, either in the walks of business, or in 
the services of the family, makes them the agents 
of deceitfulness — or that he, in short, who tempts 
them to transgress in any one thing, has, in fact, 
poured such a pervading taint into their moral 



i;PON THE LOWER ORDERS OF SOCIETY, l77 

constitution, as to spoil or corrupt them in all 
things : and that thus, upon one soUtary occasion, 
Of by the exhibition of one particular offence, a 
mischief may be done equivalent to the total 
destruction of a human sorul, or to the blotting out 
of its prospects for immortality. 

And let us just ask a master or a mistress, who 
can thus make free with the moral principle of their 
servants in one instance, how they can look for 
pure or correct principle from them in other 
instances ? What right have they to complain of 
unfaithfulness against themselves, who have deliber- 
ately seduced another into a habit of unfaithfulness 
against God ? Are they so utterly unskilled in 
the mysteries of our nature, as not to perceive, 
that if a man gather hardihood enough to break 
the Sabbath in opposition to his own conscience, 
this very hardihood will avail him to the breaking 
of other obligations? — that he whom, for their 
advantage, they have so exercised, as to fill his 
conscience with offence towards his God, will not 
scruple, for his own advantage, so to exercise 
himself, as to fill his conscience with offence towards 
his master? — that the servant whom you have 
taught to lie, has gotten such rudiments of educa- 
tion at your hand, as that, without any further help, 
he can now teach himself to purloin ? — and yet 
nothing more frequent than loud and angry com- 
plainings against the treachery of servants ; as if, 
in the general wreck of their other principles, a 
principle of consideration for the good and interest 
of their employer — and who, at the same time, has 
been their seducer — was to survive in all its power, 
h2 



178 VITIATING INFLUENCE OF THE HIGHER 

and all its sensibility. It is just such a retribution 
as was to be looked for. It is a recoil upon their 
own heads of tlie mischief which they themselves 
hav-^ originated. It is the temporal part of th« 
punishment which they have to bear for the sin o. 
our text, but not the whole of it; for better for 
them that both person and property were cast 
into the sea, than that they should stand the 
reckoning of that day, when called to give an 
account of the souls that they have murdered, and 
the blood of so mighty a destruction is required at 
their hands. 

The evil against which we have just protested, 
is an outrage of far greater enormity than tyrant 
or oppressor can inflict, in the prosecution of his 
worst designs against the political rights and liber- 
ties of the commonwealth. The very semblance 
of such designs will summon every patriot to his 
post of observation ; and, from a thousand watch- 
towers of alarm, will the outcry of freedom in 
danger be heard throughout the land. But there 
is a conspiracy of a far more malignant influence 
upon the destinies of the species that is now going 
on ; and which seems to call forth no indignant 
spirit, and to bring no generous exclamation along 
with it. Throughout all the recesses of private 
and domestic history, there is an ascendancy of 
rank and station against which no stern republican 
is ever heard to lift his voice — though it be an 
ascendancy, so exercised, as to be of most noxious 
operation to the dearest hopes and best interests 
of humanity. There is a cruel combination of 
the great against the majesty of the people — we 



UPON THE LOWER ORDERS OF SOCIETY. 179 

mean the majesty of the people's worth. There 
is a haughty imconceru about an inheritance, which, 
by an unahenable right, should be theirs — we 
mean their future and everlasting inheritance. 
There is a deadly invasion made on their rights— 
we mean their rights of conscience; and, in this 
our land of boasted privileges, are the low trampled 
upon by the high — we mean trampled into all the 
degradation of guilt and of worthlessness. They 
are utterly bereft of that homage which ought to 
be rendered to the dignity of their immortal nature ; 
and to minister to the avarice of an imperious 
master, or to spare the sickly delicacy of the 
fashionables in our land, are the truth and the 
piety of our population, and all the virtues of their 
eternity, most unfeelingly plucked away from them. 
It belongs to others to fight the battle of their 
privileges in time. But who that looks with a 
calculating eye on their duration that never ends, 
can repress an alarm of a higher order? It 
belongs to others generously to struggle for the 
place and the adjustment of the lower orders in the 
great vessel of the state. But, surely, the ques- 
tion of their place in eternity is of mightier concern 
than h(5w they are to sit and be accommodated in 
that pathway vehicle which takes them to their 
everlasting habitations. 

Christianity is, in one sense, the greatest of all 
levellers. It looks to the elements, and not to 
the circumstantials of humanity ; and, regarding 
as altogether superficial and temporary the dis- 
tinctions of this fleeting pilgrimage, it fastens on 
those points of assimilation which liken the king 



180 VITIATING INFLUENCE OF THE HIGHER 

upon the throne to the very humblest of his subject 
population. They are alike in the nakedness of 
their birth. They are alike in the sureness oi 
their decay. They are alike in the agonies of theij 
dissolution. And after the one is tombed in 
sepulchral magnificence, and the other is laid in 
his sod-wrapt grave, are they most fearfully alike 
in the corruption to which they moulder. But it 
is with the immortal nature of each that Christianity 
has to do ; and, in both the one and the other, 
does it behold a nature alike forfeited by guilt, and 
alike capable of being restored by the grace of an 
offered salvation. And never do the pomp and 
the circumstance of externals appear more humiUat- 
ing, than when, looking onwards to the day of 
resurrection, we behold the sovereign standing 
without his crown, and trembling, with the subject 
by his side, at the bar of heaven's majesty. There 
the master and the servant will be brought to their 
reckoning together; and when the one is tried 
upon the guilt and the malignant influence of his 
Sabbath companies — and is charged with the pro- 
fane and careless habit of his household establish- 
ment — and is reminded how he kept both himself 
and his domestics from the solemn ordinance — and 
is made to perceive the fearful extent of the moral 
and spiritual mischief which he has wrought as the 
irreligious head of an irreligious family — and how, 
among other things, he, under a system of fashion- 
able hypocrisy, so tampered with another's princi- 
ples as to defile his conscience, and to destroy him 
. — O I how tremendously will the little brief authority 
in which he now plays his fantastic tricks, turu to 



UPON THE LOWEB OBDERS OF SOCIETY. 18^ 

his own condemnation ; for, than thus abuse his 
authority, it were better for him that a mill&tone 
were hanged about his neck, and he were cast into 
the sea. 

And how comes it, we ask, that any master is 
armed with a power so destructive over the im- 
mortals who are around him ? God has given 
him no such power. The state has not given it 
to him. There is no law, either human or divine, 
by which he can enforce any order upon his 
servants to an act of falsehood, or to an act of 
impiety. Should any such act of authority be 
attempted on the part of the master, it should be 
followed up on the part of the servant by an act of 
disobedience. Should your master or mistress 
bid you say not at home, when you know that 
they are at home, it is your duty to refuse compli- 
ance with such an order : and if it be asked, how 
can this matter be adjusted after such a violent 
and alarming innovation on the laws of fashionable 
intercourse, we answer, just by the simple sub- 
stitution of truth for falsehood — just by prescribing 
the utterance of, engaged, which is a fact, instead 
of the utterance of, not at home, which is a lie — 
just by holding the principles of your servant to be 
of higher account than the false delicacies of your 
acquaintance — ^just by a bold and vigorous recur- 
rence to the simplicity of nature — just by deter- 
minedly doing what is right, though the example 
of a whole host were against you ; and by giving 
impulse to the current of example, when it happens 
to be mo>'ing in a proper direction. And here we 
are happy to say that fashion has of late been 



182 VITIATING INFLUENCE OF THE HIGHER 

making a capricious and accidental movement on 
the side of principle — and to be biunt, and open, 
and manly, is now on the lair way to be fashionable 
— and a temper of homelier quality is beginning to 
infuse itself into the luxuriousness, and the effem- 
inacy, and the palling and excessive complaisance 
of genteel society — and the staple of cultivated 
manners is improving in firmness, and frankness, 
and honesty, and may, at length, by the aid of a 
principle of Christian rectitude, be so interwoven 
with the cardinal virtues, as to present a different 
texture altogether from, the soft and the silken 
degeneracy of modern days. 

And that we may not appear the champions of 
an insurrection against the authority of masters, 
let us further say, that while it is the duty of clerk 
or apprentice to refuse the doing of week-day work 
on the Sabbath, and while it is the duty of servants 
to refeise the utterance of a prescribed falsehood, 
and while it is the duty of every dependent, in the 
service of his master, to serve him only in the Lord 
— yet this very principle, tending as it may to a 
rare and occasional act of disobedience, is also the 
principle which renders every servant who adheres 
to it a perfect treasure of fidelity, and attachment, 
and general obedience. This is the way in which 
to obtain a credit for his refusal, and to stamp upon 
it a noble consistency. In this way he will, even 
to the mind of an ungodly master, make up for all 
his particularities : and should he be what, if a 
Christian, he will be ; should he be, at all times, 
the most alert in service, and the most patient o. 
provocation, and the most cordial in affection, and 



UPON THE LOWER ORDERS OF SOCIETY. 183 

tiie most scrupulously honest in the charge and 
custody of all that is committed to him — then, let 
the post of drudgery at which he toils be humble 
as it may, the contrast between the meanness of 
his oflSce and the dignity of his character will only 
heighten the reverence that is due to principle, and 
make it more illustrious. His scruples may, at 
first, be the topics of displeasure, and afterwards 
the topics of occasional levity; but, in spite ot 
himeelf, will his employer be at length constrained 
to look upon them with respectful toleration. 'Ihe 
servant will be to the master a living epistle of 
Christ, and he may read there what he has not yet 
perceived in the letter of the New Testament. 
He may read, in the person of his own domestic, 
the power and the truth of Christianity. He may 
positively stand in awe of his own hired servant — 
and, regarding his bosom as a sanctuary of worth 
which it were monstrous to violate, will he feel, 
when tempted to offer one command of impiety, 
that he cannot, that he dare not. 

And, before we conclude, let us, if possible, try 
to rebuke the wealthy out of their unfeeling indif- 
ference to the souls of the poor, by the example ot 
the Saviour. Let those who look on the immor- 
tality of the poor as beneath their concern, only 
look unto Christ — to him who, for the sake of the 
poorest of us all, became poor Himself, that we, 
through His poverty, might be made rich. Let 
them think how the principle of all these oiFences 
which we have been attempting to expose, is in the 
direct face of that principle which prompted, at 
first, and which still presides over, the whole of the 



184 VITIATING INfLOENCK OF THK HIGHER 

gospel dispensation. Let ttiem learn a highw 
reverence for the eternity ot" those beneath them, 
by thinking of Him, who, to purchase an inheritance 
for the poor, and to provide them with the bless- 
ings of a preached gospel, unrobed Him of all his 
greatness ; and descended Himself to the lot and 
the labours of poverty ; and toiled, to the beginning 
of His public ministry, at the work of a carpenter; 
and submitted to all the horrors of a death which 
was aggravated by the burden of a world's atone- 
ment, and made inconceivably severe, by there 
being infused into it all the bitterness of the cup 
of expiation. Think, O think, when some petty 
design of avarice or vanity would lead you to forget 
the imperishable souls of those who are beneath 
you, that you are setting yourselves in diametric 
opposition to that which lieth nearest to the heart 
of the Saviour ; that you are countervailing the 
whole tendency of His redemption ; that you are 
thwarting the very object of that enterprise for 
which all heaven is represented as in motion — 
and angels are with wonder looking on — and God 
tiie Father laid an appointment on the Son of 
His love — and He, the august personage in whom 
the magnificent train of prophecy, from the begin- 
ning of the world, has its theme and its fulfilment, 
at length came amongst us, in shrouded majesty, 
and was led to the cross, like a lamb for the 
slaughter, and bowed His head in agony, and gave 
up the ghost. 

And lujrc let us address one word more to the 
Inaste-s and mistresses of families. By adopiins; 
the retormatiuns to wmcii we have been urgmg 



UPON THE LOWER ORDERS OF SOCIETY. Tl85 

you, you may do good to the cause of Christianity, 
and yet not advance, by a single hair-breadtb, 
the Christianity of your own souls. It is not by 
this one reformation,, or, indeed, by any given 
number of reformations, that you are saved. It 
is by believing in Christ that men are saved. 
You may escape, it is sure, a higher degree of 
punishment, but you will not escape damnation, 
Yoii may do good to the souls of your servants, by 
a ngid observance of the lesson of this day. But 
v.-e seek the good of your own souls, also, and we 
yaonounce upon them that they are in a state of 
death, till one great act be performed, and one act, 
too, which does not consist of any number of 
particular acts, or particular reformations. What 
shall I do to be saved ? Believe in the Lord 
Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved. And he 
who believeth not; the wrath of God abideth on 
him. Do this, if you want to make the great 
and important transition for yourselves. Do this, 
if you want your own name to be blotted out of 
the book of condemnation. If you seek to have 
your own persons justified before God, submit to 
the righteousness of God — even that righteous- 
ness which is through the faith of Christ, and is 
unto all and upon all who believe. This is the 
turning point of your acceptance with the Law- 
giver. And at this step, also, in the history of 
your souls, will there be applied to you a power 
of motive, and will you be endowed with an 
obedient sensibility to the influence of motive, 
T^'hich will make it the turning point of a new heart 
and a new character. The particular reforma- 



186 VITIATING INFLUENCE, &C. 

tion that we have now been urging will be one 
of a crowd of other reformations; and, in the 
spirit of Him who pleased not Himself, but gave 
up His life for others, will you forego all the 
desires of selfishness and vanity, and look not 
merely to your own things, but also to the thingf 
of otberg* 



«£1? THE LOVE OP MONEY. 18? 

DISCOURSE VIII. 

ON THE LOVE OF MONEY. 



^ If I iiave made gold my hope, or have said to the fine gold, 
Thou art my confidence ; if I rejoiced because my wealth wai 
great, and because mine hand had gotten much ; if I beheld the 
sun when it shined, or the moon walking in brightness ; and my 
heart hath been secretly enticed, or my mouth hath kissed my 
hand ; this also were an iniquity to be punished by the judge; for 
I should have denied the God that is above." — Jos xxxi. 24— 
28. 

What is worthy of remark in this passage is, that 
a certain affection, only known among the votaries 
of Paganism, should he classed under the same char- 
acter and have the same condemnation with an 
affection, not only known, but allowed, nay cherished 
into habitual supremacy, all over Christendom. 
How universal is it among those who are in pursuit 
of wealth, to make gold their hope, and, among those 
who are in possession of wealth, to make fine gold 
their confidence! Yet we are here told that this 
is virtually as complete a renunciation of God as to 
practise some of the worst charms of idolatry. And 
it might perhaps serve to unsettle the vanity of those 
who, unsuspicious of the disease that is in their 
hearts, are wholly given over to this world, and wholly 
without alarm in their anticipations of another,-^ 
could we convince them that the most reigning and 
resistless desire by which they are actuated, stamps 
th« same perversitv on ':hem, in the sight of Godj 



188 ON THE LOVE OF MONEY. 

a6 he sees to be in those who are worshippers of the 
sun in the firmament, or are offering incense to the 
moon, as the queen of iieaven. 

We recoil from an idolater, as from one who 
labours under a great moral derangement, in suffer- 
ing his regards to be carried away from the true God 
to an idol. But, is it not just the same derange- 
ment, on the part of man, that he should love an}' 
created good, and in the enjoyment of it lose sight 
of the Creator — that he should delight himself w itb 
the use and the possession of a gift, and be unaffected 
by the circumstance of its having been put into his 
hands by a giver — that, thoroughly absorbed with 
the present and the sensible gratification, there 
should be no room left for the movements of duty 
or regard to the Being who furnished him with the 
materials, and endowed him with the organs, of every 
gratification, — that he should thus lavish all his de- 
sires on the surrounding materialism, and fetch from 
it all his delights, while the thought of Him who 
formed it is habitually absent from his heart — that, 
in the play of those attractions that subsist between 
him and the various objects in the neighbourhood 
of his person, there should be the same want of 
reference to God, as there is in the play of those 
attractions which subsist between apiece of uncon- 
scious matter and the other matter tiiat is around 
it — that all the influences which operate upon the 
human will should emanate from so many various 
points in the mechanism of what is formed., but 
that no practical or ascendant influence should come 
down upon it from the presiding and the preserving 
Deity ? Why, if such be man, he could not be 



ON THE LOVE OF MONEY. 189 

Otherwise, tliougli there were no Deity. The part 
he sustains in the world is the very same that it would 
have been, had the world sprung into being of itself ; 
or, without an originating mind, had maintained its 
being from eternity. He just puts forth the evolu- 
tions of his own nature, as one of the component in- 
dividuals in a vast independent system of nature, 
made up of many parts and many individuals. In 
hungering for what is agreeable to his senses, or 
recoiling from what is bitter or unsuitable to them, 
he does so without thinking of God, or borrowing 
any impulse to his own will from any thing he knows 
or believes to be the will of God. Religion has just 
as little to do with those daily movements of his which 
are voluntary, as it has to do with the growth of his 
body, which is involuntary ; or, as it has to do, in other 
words, with the progress and the phenomena of vege- 
tation. With a mind that ought to know God, and a 
conscience that ought to award to Him the supreme 
jurisdiction, he lives as effectually without Him, as if 
he had no mind and no conscience ; and, bating a few 
transient visitations of thought, and a few regu- 
larities of outward and mechanical observation, do we 
behold man running, and willing, and preparing, and 
enjoying, just as if there was no other portion than 
the creature — just as if the world, and its visible 
elements, formed the all with which he had to do. 
I wish to impress upon you tlie distinction that 
there is between the love of money, and the love of 
what money purchases. Either of these affections 
may equally displace God from the heart. But, 
there is a mahgnity and an inveteracy of atheism 
in the former which does not belong to the latter, 



190 ON THE LOVE OF MONEY. 

and in virtue of which it may be seen that the love 
of money is, indeed, the root of all evil. 

When we indulge the love of that which is 
purchased by money, the materials of gratification, 
and the organs of gratification are present with 
each other — just as in the enjoyments of the inferior 
animals, and just as in all the simple and immediate 
enjoyments of man ; such as the tasting of food, or 
the smelling of a flower. There is an adaptation 
of the senses to certain external objects, and there 
is a pleasure arising out of that adaptation, and it 
is a pleasure which may be felt by man, along with 
a right and a full infusion of godliness. The 
primitive Christians, for example, ate their meat 
with gladness and singleness of heart, praising 
God. But, in the case of every unconverted 
man, the pleasure has no such accompaniment. 
Pie carries in his heart no recognition of that hand, 
by the opening of which it is, that the means and 
the materials of enjoyment are placed within his 
reach. The matter of the ergoyment is all with 
wl)ich he is conversant. The Author of the 
enjoyment is unheeded. The avidity with which 
he rushes onward to any of the direct gratifications 
of nature bears a resemblance to the avidity with 
which one of the lower creation rushes to its food, 
or to its water, or to the open field, whei'e it gambols 
in all the wantonness of freedoai, and finds a high- 
breathed joy in the very strength and velocity of 
its movements. And the atheism of the former, who 
has a mind for the sense and knowledge of his 
Creator, is often as entire as the atheism of the 
latter, who has it not. Man, who ought to look 



ON THE LOVE OF MONEY. ]9 

to the primary cause of all his blessings, becausa 
he is capable of seeing thus far, is often as blind to 
God, in the midst of enjoyment, as the animal wh3 
is not capable of seeing him. He can trace the 
stream to its fountain ; but still he drinks of the 
stream with as much greediness of pleasure, and aa 
little recognition of its source, as the animal 
beneath him. In other words, his atheism, while 
tasting the bounties of Pi'ovidence, is just as com- 
plete, as is the atheism of the inferior animals. 
But theirs proceeds from their incapacity of 
knowing God. His proceeds from his not liking 
to retain God in his knowledge. He may come 
under the power of godliness, if he would. But he 
chooses rather that the power of sensuality should 
lord it over him, and his whole man is engrossed 
with the objects of sensuality. 

But a man differs from an animal in being some- 
thing more than a sensitive being. He is also a 
reflectiv-e being. He has the power of thought, and 
inference, and anticipation, to signalize him above 
the beasts of the field, or of the forest; and yet will 
it be found, in the case of every natural man, that 
the exercise of those powers, so far from having 
carried him nearer, has only widened his departure 
from God, and given a more deliberate and wilful 
character to his atheism, than if he had been 
without them altogether. 

In virtue of the powers of mind which belong to 
him, he can carry his thoughts beyond the present 
desires and the present gratification. He can 
calculate on the visitations of future desire, and on 
the means of its gratification. He can not only 



192 ON THE LOVE OF MONEY. 

follow out the impulse of hunger that is now upon 
him ; he can look onwards to the successive and 
recurring impulses of hunger which await him, and 
he can devise expedients for relieving it. Out of 
that great stream of supply, which comes direct 
from heaven to earth, for the sustenance of all its 
living generations, he can draw off and appropriate 
a separate rill of conveyance, and direct it into a 
reservoir for himself. He can enlarge the capacity, 
or he can strengthen the embankments of this 
reservoir. By doing the one, he augments his 
proportion of this common tide of wealth which 
circulates through the world, and by doing the 
other, he augments his security for holding it in 
perpetual possession. The animal who drinks 
out of the stream thinks not whence it issues. But 
man thinks of the reservoir which yields to him 
his portion of it. And he looks no further. He 
thinks not that to fill it, there must be a great and 
original fountain, out of which there issueth a 
mighty flood of abundance for the purpose of 
distribution among all the tribes and families of 
the world. He stops short at the secondary and 
artificial fabric which he himself hath formed, and 
out of which, as from a spring, he draws his own 
peculiar enjoyments ; and never thinks either of 
his own peculiar supply fluctuating with the varia- 
tions of the primary spring, or of connecting t^iese 
variations with the will of the great but unseen 
director of all things. It is true, that if this main and 
originating fountain be, at any time, less copious in 
its emission, he will have less to draw from it to 
his own reservoir ; and in that very proportion will 



ON THE LOVE OF MONEY. 193 

Jiis share of the bounties of Providence be reduced. 
But still it is to the well, or receptacle, of his own 
strikino^ out that he looks, as his main security for 
the relief of nature's vi^ants, and the abundant 
supply of nature's enjoyments. It is upon his 
own work that he depends in this matter, and not 
ou the work or the will of Him who is the Author 
of nature ; who giveth rain from heaven and fruitful 
seasons, and filleth every heart with food and 
gladness. And thus it is that the reason of man? 
and the retrospective power of man, still fail to 
carry him, by an ascending process, to the First 
Cause. He stops at the instrumental cause, which, 
by his own wisdom and his own power, he has put 
into operation. In a word, the man's understanding 
is overrun with atheism, as well as his desires. 
The intellectual as well £is the sensitive part of 
his consitution seems to be infected with it. When, 
like the instinctive and unreflecting animal, he 
engages in the act of direct enjoyment, he is Uke 
it, too, in its atheism. When he rises above the 
animal, and, in the exercise of his higher and larger 
faculties, he engages in the act of providing for en- 
joyment, he still carries his atheism along with him. 
A sum of money is, in all its functions, equivalent 
to such a reservoir. Take one year with another, 
and the annual consumption of the world cannot 
exceed the amiual produce which issues from the 
storehouse of Him who is the great and the bountiful 
Provider of all its families. The money that is in 
any man's possession represents the share which he 
can appropriate to himself of this produce. It it 
be a large sum, it is like a capacious reservoir on 

VOL. VI. T 



194 ON THE LOVE OF MO^jIEY. 

the bank of the river of abundance. If it be laid 
out, on firm and stable securities, still it is like a 
firmly embanked reservoir. The man who toils to 
increase his money is like a man who toils to 
enlarge the capacity of his reservoir. The man 
who suspects a flaw in his securities, or who 
apprehends, in the report of failures and fluctua- 
tions, that his money is all to flow away from him, 
is like a man who apprehends a flaw in the 
embankments of his reservoir. Meanwhile, in all 
the care that is thus expended, either on the money 
or on the magazine, the originating source, out ol 
which there is imparted to the one all its real 
worth, or there is imparted to the other all its real 
fulness, is scarcely ever thought of. Let God 
turn the earth into a barren desert, and the money 
ceases to be convertible to any purpose of enjoy- 
ment ; or let Him lock up that magazine of great 
and general supply, out of which He showers 
abundance among our habitations, and all the 
subordinate magazines formed beside the wonted 
stream of liberality, would remain empty. But 
all this is forgotten by the vast majority of our 
unthoughtful and unreflecting :»pecies. The patience 
of God is still unexhausted ; and the seasons still 
roll in kindly succession ever the heads of an 
ungrateful generation ; and that period, when the 
machinery of our present system shall stop and be 
taken to pieces has not yet arrived ; and that 
Spirit, who will not always strive with the children 
of men, is still prolonging His experiment on the 
powers and the perversities of our moral nature ; 
and slili suspending the edict of dissolution, by 



ON THi; LOVE OF MONEY. 195 

which this earth and these heavens are at length 
to pass away. So that the sun still shines upon 
us ; and the clouds still drop upon us ; and the 
earth still puts forth the bloom and the beauty of 
its luxuriance ; and all the ministers of heaven's 
liberality still walk their annual round, and scatter 
plenty over the face of an alienated world; and 
the whole of nature continues as smiling in promise, 
and as sure in fulfilment, as in the days of our 
forefathers ; and out of her large and universal 
granary is there, in every returning year, as rich a 
conveyance of aliment as before, to the populous 
family in whose behalf it is opened. But it is the 
business of many among that population, each to 
erect his own separate granary, and to replenish it 
out of the general store, and to feed himself and 
his dependents out of it. And he is right in so 
doing. But he is not right in looking to his own 
peculiar receptacle, as if it were the first and the 
emanating fountain of all his enjoyments. He is 
not right in thus idolizing the work of his own 
hands — awarding no glory and no confidence to 
Him in whose hands is the key of that great store- 
house, out of which every lesser storehouse of man 
derives its fulness. He is not right, in labouring 
after the money which purchaseth all things, to 
avert the earnestness of his regards from the 
Being who provides all things. He is not right, 
in thus building his security on that which is 
subordinate, unheeding and unmindful of Him 
who is supreme. It is not right, that silver and 
gold, though unshaped into statuary, should still 
be doing, in this enhghtened land, what the imagei 



196 ON THE I.OVE OF MONEY. 

cf Paganism once did. It is not right, that they 
should thus supplant the deference which is owing 
to the God and the governor of all things — or 
that each man amongst us should, in the secret 
homage of trust and satisfaction which he renders 
to his bills, and his deposits, and his deeds of 
property and possession, endow these various 
articles with the same moral ascendancy over his 
heart, as the household gods of antiquity had over 
the idolaters of antiquity — making them as eflfec- 
tually usurp the place of the divinity, and dethrone 
the one Monarch of heaven and earth from that pre- 
eminence of trust and of affection that belongs to him. 
He who makes a god of his pleasure, renders 
to this idol the homage of his senses. He who 
makes a god of his wealth, renders to this idol 
the homage of his mind ; and he, therefore, of the 
two, is the more hopeless and determined idolater. 
The former is goaded on to his idolatry, by the 
power of appetite. The latter cultivates his with 
wilful and deliberate perseverance ; consecrates 
his very highest powers to its service ; embarks in 
it, not with the heat of passion, but, with the cool- 
ness of steady and calculating principle ; fully gives 
up his reason and his time, and all the faculties of 
his understanding, as well as all the desires of his 
heart, to the great object of a fortune in this world ; 
makes tlie acquirement of gain the settled aim, and 
the prosecution of that aim the settled habit of his 
existence ; sits the whole day long at the post of 
his ardent and unremitting devotions ; and, as he 
labours at the desk of his counting-house, has his 
soul just as effectually seduced from the living 



ON THE LOVE OF MONEY. 197 

God to an object distinct from Him, and contrary 
to Him, as if the ledger over which he was bend- 
ing was a book of mystical characters, written in 
honour of some golden idol placed before him, and 
with a view to render this idol propitious to him- 
self and to his family. Baal and Moloch were 
not more substantially the gods of rebellious Israel, 
than Mammon is the god of all his affections. To 
the fortune he has reared, or is rearing, for himself 
and his descendants, he ascribes all the power and 
all the independence of a divinity. With the 
Avealth he has gotten by his own hands, does he 
feel himself as independent of God, as the Pagan 
does, who, happy in the fancied protection of an 
image made with his own hand, suiFers no dis- 
turbance to his quiet, from any thought of the real 
but the unknown Deity. His confidence is in his 
treasure, and not in God. It is there that he places 
all his safety and all his sufficiency. It is not on 
the Supreme Being, conceived in the light of a real 
and a personal agent, that he places his dependence. 
It is on a mute and material statue of his own 
erection. It is wealth which stands to him in the 
place of God — to which he awards the credit of all 
his enjoyments — which he looks to as the emanating 
fountain of all his present sufficiency — from which 
he gathers his fondest expectations of all the bright 
and fancied blessedness that is yet before him — on 
which he, rests as the firmest and stablest founda- 
tion of all that the heart can wish, or the eye can 
long after, both for himself and for his children. 
It matters not to him, that all his enjoyment 
comes from a primary fountain, and that his w taltb 



198 ON THE LOVE OF MONEY. 

is only an intermediate reservoir. It matters not 
to him, that, if God were to set a seal upon the 
door of the upper storehouse in heaven, or to blast 
and to burn up all the fruitfulness of earth, he 
would reduce, to the worthlessness of dross, all the 
silver and the gold that abound in it. Still the 
gold and the silver are his gods. His own foun- 
tain is between him and the fountain of original 
supply. His wealth is between him and God. 
Its various lodging-places., whether in the bank, 
or in the place of registration, or in the depository 
of wills and title-deeds — these are the sanctuaries 
of his secret worship — these are the high-places of 
his adoration ; and never did devout Israelite look 
with more intentness towards Mount Zion, and 
with his face towards Jerusalem, than he does to 
his wealth, as to the mountain and stronghold of 
his security. Nor could the Supreme be more 
effectually deposed from the homage of trust and 
gratitude than He actually is, though his wealth 
were recalled from its various investments ; and 
turned into one mass of gold ; and cast into a piece 
of molten statuary ; and enshrined on a pedestal, 
around which all his household might assemble, 
and make it the object of their family devotions; 
and plied every hour of every day with all the 
fooleries of a senseless and degrading Paganism. 
It is thus, that God may keep up the charge of 
idolatry against us, even after all its images have 
been overthrown. It is thus that dissuasives from 
idolatry are still addressed, in the New Testament, 
to the pupils of a new and better dispensation ; 
that lit'tle children are warned against idols ; and 



ON THE LOTE OF MONET. 199 

all oJ^us are warned to flee from covetousness, which 
is idolatry. 

To iooK. no further than to fortune as the dis- 
penser of aii the enjoyments which money can 
purchase, is to make that fortune stand in the 
place of God. It is to make sense shut out faith, 
and to rob the King eternal and invisible of that 
supremacy, to which all the blessings of human 
existence, and all the varieties of human condition, 
ought, in every instance, and in every particular, 
to be referred. But, as we have already remarked, 
the love of money is one affection, and the love of 
what is purchased by money is another. It was, 
at first, we have no doubt, loved for the sake of the 
good things which it enabled its possessor to 
acquire. But whether, as the result of associa- 
tions in the mind so rapid as to escape the notice 
of our own consciousness — or as the fruit of an 
infection running by sympathy among all men 
busily engaged in the prosecution of wealth, as the 
supreme good of their being — certain it is, that 
money, originally pursued for the sake of other 
things, comes at length to be prized for its own 
pake. And, perhaps, there is no one circumstance 
which serves more to liken the love of money to the 
most irrational of the heathen idolatries, than that 
it at length passes into the love of money for 
itself; and acquires a most enduring power over 
the human affections, separately altogether from 
the power of purchase and of command which 
belongs to it, over the proper and original objects 
of human desire. The first thing which set man 
agoing in the pursuit of wealth, was that, through 



200 ON THE LOVE OF MONEY. 

it, as an intervening medium, he found his way t< 
other enjoyments ; and it proves him, as we have 
observed, capable of a higher reach of anticipation 
than the beasts of the field, or the fowls of the air, 
that he is thus able to calculate, and to foresee, 
and to build up a provision for the wants of futurity. 
But, mark how soon this boasted distinction of hw 
faculties is overthrown, and how near to each 
Other lie the dignity and the debasement of the 
human understanding. If it evinced a loftier mind 
in man than in the inferior animals, that he imented 
money, and by the acquisition of it can both secure 
abundance for himself, and transmit this abundance 
to the future generations of his family — what have 
we to offer, in vindication of this intellectual 
eminence, when we witness how soon it is, that 
the pursuit of wealth ceases to be rational ? — How, 
instead of being prosecuted as an instrument, 
either for the purchase of ease, or the purchase of 
enjoyment, both the ease and enjoyment of a whole 
life are rendered up as sacrifices at its shrine ? — 
How^, from being sought after as a minister of 
gratification to the appetites of nature, it at length 
brings nature into bondage, and robs her of all her 
simple delights, and pours the infusion of worm- 
wood into the currency of her feelings ? — making 
that man sad who ought to be cheerful, and that 
man who ought to rejoice in his present abundance, 
filling him either with the cares of an ambition 
which never will be satisfied, or with the appre- 
hensions of a distress which, in all its pictured and 
exaggerated evils, will never be realized. And it 
is wonderful, it is passing wonderful, that wealth, 



OU THE LOVE OF MONEY. 201 

which derives ah that is true and sterling in its 
worth from its subserviency to other advantages, 
should, apart from ail thought about this subser-. 
viency, be made the object of such fervent and 
fatiguing devotion. Insomuch, that never did 
Indian devotee inflict upon himself a severer agony 
at the footstool of his Paganism, than those devo- 
tees of wealth who, for its acquirement as their 
ultimate object, will forego all the uses for which 
alone it is valuable — will give up all that is gen- 
uine or tranquil in the pleasures of life ; and will 
pierce themselves through with many sorrows; 
and will undergo all the fiercer tortures of the 
mind ; and, instead of employing what they have 
to smooth their passage through the world, will, 
upon the hazardous sea of adventure, turn the 
whole of this passage into a storm — thus exalting 
wealth, from a servant unto a lord, who, in return 
for the homage that he obtains from his worship- 
pers, exercises them, like Rehoboam his subjects 
of old, not with whips but with scorpions — with 
consuming anxiety, with never-sated desire, with 
brooding apprehension, and its frequent and ever- 
flitiing spectres, and the endless jealousies of com- 
petition with men as intently devoted, and as 
emulous of a high place in the temple of their 
common idolatry, as themselves. And, without 
going to the higher exhibitions of this propensity, 
in all its rage and in all its restlessness, we have 
only to mark its workings on the walk of even and 
every-day citizenship ; and there see, how, in the 
hearts even of its most common-place votaries, 
wealth is followed after, for its own sake ; ho-w 
i2 



202 ON THE LOVE OF MONEY. 

an-associated with all for which reason pronounce? 
it to be of estimation, but, in virtue of some mysteri-. 
ous and undefinabie charm, operating not on any 
principle of the judgment, but on the utter per- 
versity of judgment, money has come to be oi 
higher account than all that is purchased by money, 
and has attained a rank co-ordinate with that 
which our Saviour assigns to the life and to the 
body of man, in being reckoned more than meat 

and more than raiment Thus making that which 

is subordinate to be primary, and that which is pri- 
mary subordinate; transferring, by a kind of fascina- 
tion, the affections away from wealth in use, to 
wealth in idle and unemployed possession, — inso- 
much, that the most welcome intelligence you could 
give to the proprietor of many a snug deposit, in 
some place of secure and progressive accumula- 
tion, would be, that he should never require any 
part either of it or of its accumulation back again for 
the purpose of expenditure — and that, to the end 
of his life, every new year should witness another 
unimpaired addition to the bulk or the aggrandize- 
ment of his idol. And it would just heighten his 
enjoyment, could he be told, with prophetic cer- 
tainty, that this process of undisturbed augmenta- 
tion would go on with his children's children, to 
the last age of the world ; that the economy of 
each succeeding race of descendants would leave 
the sum with its interest untouched, and the place 
of its sanctuary unviolated ; and, that through a 
series of iudefinite generations, would the magnitude 
ever grow, and the lustre ever brighten, of that 
household god, which he bad erected for his owii 



ox THE LOVE OF MONET. 203 

senseless adoration, and bequeathed as an object 
of as senseless adoration to his family. 

We have the authority of that word which has 
been pronounced a discerner of the thoughts and 
intents of the heart, that it cannot have two masters, 
or that there is not room in it for two great and 
ascendant affections. The engrossing power of one 
such affection is expressly affirmed of the love for 
Mammon, or the love for money thus named and 
characterized as an idol. Or, in other words, 
if the love of money be in the heart, the love of God 
is not there. If a man be trusting in uncertain 
riches, he is not trusting in the living God, who 
giveth us all things richly to enjoy. If his heart be 
set upon covetousness, it is set upon an object of 
idolatry. The true divinity is moved away from 
His place; and, worse than atheism which would only 
leave it empty, has the love of wealth raised another 
divinity upon His throne. So that covetousness 
offers a more daring and positive aggression on the 
right and territory of the Godhead, than even 
infidelity. The latter would only desolate the 
sanctuary of heaven ; the former would set up an 
abomination in the midst of it. It not only strips 
God of love and of confidence, which are his pre- 
rogatives, but it transfers them to another. And 
little does the man who is proud in honour, but, at 
the same time, proud and peering in ambition — . 
little does he think, that, though acquitted in the 
eye of all his fellows, there still remains an atrocity 
of a deeper character than even that of atheism, 
with which he is chargeable. Let him just take an 
account of his mind, amid the labours of his 



204 ON THE LOVE OF MONEY 

merchandise, and he will find that the livipg God 
has no ascendancy there ; but that weaitli just as 
much as if personified into life, and agency, and 
power, wields over him all the ascendancy of God. 
Where his treasure is, his heart is also ; and, linking 
as he does his main hope with its increase, and his 
main fear with its fluctuations and its failures, he 
has as effectually dethroned the Supreme from 
his heart, and deified an usurper in his room, as il 
fortune had been embodied into a goddess, and he 
were in the habit of repairing, with a crowd of other 
worshippers, to her temple. She, in fact, is the 
dispenser of that which he chiefly prizes in existence. 
A smile from her is worth all the promises of the 
Eternal, and her threatening frown more dreadful 
to the imagination than all his terrors. 

And the disease is as near to universal as it is 
virulent. Wealth is the goddess whom all the world 
worshippeth. There is many a city in our empire, 
of which, with an eye of apostolical discernment, it 
may be seen, that it is almost wholly given over to 
idolatry. If a man look no higher than to hia 
money for his enjoyments, then money is his god. 
It is the god of his dependence, and the god upon 
whom his heart is staid. Or if, apart from other 
enjoyments, it, by some magical power of its own, 
has gotten the ascendancy, then still it is followed 
after as the supreme good ; and there is an actual 
supplanting of the living God. He is robbed of 
the gratitude that we owe him for our daily susten- 
ance; for, instead of receiving it as if it came direct 
out of his hand, we receive it as if it came from 
the hand of a secondary agent, to whom we ascribe 



ON THE LOVE OF MONEY. 205 

nil the stability and independeiice of God. Thia 
wealth, in fact, obscures to us the character of God, 
as the real though unseen Author of our various 
blessings ; and as if by a material intervention, does 
it hide from the perception of nature, the hand which 
feeds, and clothes, and maintains us in hfe, and in 
all the comforts and necessaries of life. It just 
has the effect of thickening still more that impalpable 
veil which lies between God and the eye of the 
senses. We lose all discernment of him as the 
giver of our comforts ; and coming, as they appear 
to do, from that wealth which our fancies have 
raised into a living personification, does this idol 
stand before us, not as a deputy but as a substitute 
for that Being, with whom it is that we really have 
to do. All this goes both to widen and to fortify 
that disruption which has taken place between God 
and the world. It adds the power of one great 
master idol to the seducing influence of all the lesser 
idolatries. When the hking and the confidence of 
men are towards money, there is no direct inter- 
course, either by the one or the other of these 
affections towards God ; and, in proportion as he 
sends forth his desires, and rests his security on the 
former, in that very proportion does he renounce 
God as his hope, and God as his dependence. 

And to advert, for one moment, to the misery 
of this affection, as well as to its sinfulness. Ho, 
over whom it reigns, feels a worthlessness in his 
present wealth, after it is gotten ; and when to this 
we ada the restlessness of a yet unsated appetite, 
lording it over all his convictions, and panting foi 
more; when, to the dulnessof bis actual satisfaction 



206 ON THE LOVE OF MONEY. 

in all the riches that he has, we add his still un- 
quenched, and, indeed, unquenchable desire for the 
riches that he has not ; when we reflect that as, in 
the pursuit of wealth, he widens the circle of his 
operation, so he lengthens out the line of his open 
mni hazardous exposure, and multiphes, along the 
extent of it, those vulnerable points from which 
another and another dart of anxiety may enter into 
his heart; when he feels himself as if floating on an 
ocean of contingency, on which, perhaps, he is only 
borne up by the breath of a credit that is fictitious, 
and which, liable to burst every moment, may leave 
him to sink, under the weight of his overladen 
speculation; when, suspended on the doubtful result 
of his bold and uncertain adventure, he dreads the 
tidings of disaster in every arrival, and livci in a 
continual agony of feeling, kept up by the crowd 
and turmoil of his manifold distractions, and so 
overspreading the whole compass of his thoughts, 
as to leave not one narrow space for the thought of 
eternity; — will any beholder just look to the mind 
of this unhappy man, thus tost and bewildered, and 
thrown into a general unceasing frenzy, made out 
of many fears and many agitations, and not say, 
that the bird of the air which sends forth its un- 
reflecting song, and lives on the fortuitous bounty 
of Providence, is not higher in the scale of enjoyment 
th-xn he ? And how much more, then, the quiet 
Christian beside him, who, in possession of food 
and raiment, has that godliness with contentment 
which is great gain — who, with the peace of heaven 
in his heart, and the glories of heaven in his eye, 
has found out the true philosophy of existence ; has 



ON THE LOVE OF MONEY. 207 

gought a portion where alone a portion can be found, 
and, in bidding away from his mind the love of money, 
has bidden away all the cross and all the carefulness 
along with it. 

Death will soon break up every swelling enterprise 
of ambition, and put upon it a most cruel and de- 
grading mockery. And it is, indeed, an affecting 
sight, to behold the workings of this world's infatu- 
ation among so many of our fellow mortals nearing 
and nearing everyday to eternity, and yet, instead of 
taking heed to that which is before them^ mistaking 
their temporary vehicle for their abiding home — and 
spending all their time and all their thought upon 
its accommodations. It is all the doing of our great 
adversary, thus to invest the trifles of a day in such 
characters of greatness and durability; and it is, 
indeed, one of the most formidable of his wiles. And 
whatever may be the instrument of reclaiming men 
from this delusion, it certainly is not any argument 
either about the shortness of life, or the certainty and 
awfulness of its approaching termination. On this 
point man is capable of a stout-hearted resistance, 
even to ocular demonstration ; nor do we know a 
more striking evidence of the derangement which must 
have passed upon the human faculties, than to see 
how, in despite of arithmetic, — how, in despite of 
manifold experience — how, in despite of all his gather- 
ing wrinkles, and all his growing infirmities — how, in 
despite of the ever-lessening distance between him 
and his sepulchre, and of all the tokens of preparation 
for the onset of the last messenger, with which, in 
the shape of weakness, and breathlessness, and 
dimness of eyes, he is visited ; will the feeble and 



20S ON THE LOVE OF MOKET, 

asthmatic man still shake his silver locks in all thfl 
glee and transport of which he is capable, wnen he 
hears of his gainful adventures, and his new ac- 
cumulations. Nor can we tell how near he must 
get to his grave, or how far on he must advance in 
the process of dying, ere gain cease to delight, and 
the idol of wealth cease to be dear to him. But 
when we see that the topic is trade and its profits, 
which lights up his faded eye with the glow of its 
chiefest ecstasy, we are as much satisfied that he 
leaves the w orld with all his treasure there, and all 
the desires of his heart there, as if, acting what i3 
told of the miser's death-bed, he made his bills and 
his parchments of security the companions of his 
bosom, and the last movements of his life were a 
fearful, tenacious, determined grasp, of what to hini 
formed the all for which life was valuable. 



POVTETl OV A NEW AFFECTION. 209 



DISCOURSE IX. 

THE EXPULSIVE POWER OF A NEW 
AFFECTION. 



•* Love not the world, neither the things that are in the woili 
If any man lore the world, the lore of the Father is not in Lua." 
— 1 John ii. 15. 

There are two ways in which a practical morahst 
may attempt to displace from the human heart it3 
love of the world — either by a demonstration of 
the world's vanity, so as that the heart shall be pre- 
vailed upon simply to withdraw its regards from an 
object that is not worthy of it ; or, by setting forth 
another object, even God, as more worthy of its 
attachment, so as that the heart shall be prevailed 
upon not to resign an old affection, which shall 
have nothing to succeed it, but to exchange an old 
affection for a new one. My purpose is to show, 
that from the constitution of our nature, the former 
method is altogether incompetent and ineff^ectual— 
and that the latter method will alone suffice for 
the rescue and recovery of the heart from the 
wrong affoction that domineers over it. After 
having accomplished this purpose, I shall attempt 
a few practical observations. 

Love may be regarded in two different conditions. 
The first is, when its object is at a distance, and 
then it becomes love in a state of desire. The 
♦lecond is, when its object is in possession, and then 
It becomes love in a state of indulgence. Under 



210 POWER OF A NEW AFFECnON. 

the impulse of desire, man feels himself urged 
onward in some path or pursuit of activity for i*^^a 
gratification. The faculties of his mind are put 
into busy exei'cise. In the steady direction of one 
great and engrossing interest, his attention is 
recalled from the many reveries into which it might 
otherwise have wandered ; and the powers of his 
body are forced away from an indolence in which it 
else might have languished; and that time is crowded 
with occupation, which but for some object of keen 
and devoted ambition, might have drivelled along 
in successive hours of weariness and distaste — and 
though hope does not always enliven, and success 
does not always crown this career of exertion, yet 
in the midst of this very variety, and with the 
aiieniations of occasional disappointment, is the 
machinery oi tne whole man kept in a sort oi 
congenial play, and upholden in that tone and 
temper which are most agreeable to it. Insomuch, 
that if, through the extirpation of that desire which 
forms the originating principle of all this movement, 
the machinery were to stop, and to receive no 
impulse from another desire substituted in its place, 
the man would be left with all his propensities to 
action in a state of most painful and unnatural 
abandonment. A sensitive being suffers, and is in 
violence, if, after having thoroughly rested from his 
fatigue, or been relieved from his pain, he continue 
in possession of powers without any excitement to 
these powers ; if he possess a capacity of deshe 
without having an object of desire ; or if he have 
a spare energy upon his person, without a counter- 
part, and without a stimulus to call it into operatioa 



POWER OF A NEW AFFECTION. 2U 

The misery of such a condition is often realized by 
him who is retired from business, or who is retired 
from law, or who is even retired from the occupa- 
tions of the ch."\se, and of the gamiVig table. Such 
is the demand of our nature for an object in 
pursuit, that no accumulation of previous success 
can extinguish it — and thus it is, that the most 
prosperous merchant, and the most victorious 
general, and the most fortunate gamester, when 
the labour of their respective vocations has come to 
a close, are often found to languish in the midst of 
all their acquisitions, as if out of their kindred and 
rejoicing element. It is quite in vain with such a 
constitutional appetite for employment in man, to 
attempt cutting away from him the spring or the 
principle of one employment, without providing 
him with another. The whole heart and habit 
will rise in resistance against such an undertaking. 
The else unoccupied female who spends the hours 
of every evening at some play of hazard, knows as 
well as you, that the pecuniary gain, or the 
honourable triumph of a successful contest, are 
altogether paltry. It is not such a demonstration 
of vanity as this that will force her away from her 
dear and delightful occupation. The habit cannot 
so be displaced, as to leave nothing but a negative 
and cheerless vacancy behind it — though it may so 
be supplanted as to be followed up by another habit 
of employment, to which the power of some new 
affection has constrained her. It is willingly 
suspended, for example, on any single evening, 
should the time that wont to be allotted to gaming, 
require to be spent on the preparations of an 



812 POWER OF A NEW AFFECTION. 

approaching assembly. The ascendant po\«er oi 
a second affection will do, what no exposition 
however forcible, of the folly and worthlessness of 
the first, ever • could effectuate. And it is the 
same in the great world. We shall never be able 
to arrest any of its leading pursuits, by a naked 
demonstration of their vanity. It is quite in vain 
to think of stopping one of these pursuits in any 
way else, but by stimulating to another. In 
attempting to bring a worldly man intent and busied 
with ^he prosecution of his objects to a dead stand, 
we have not merely to encounter the charm which 
he annexes to these objects — but we have to 
encounter the pleasure which he feels in the very 
prosecution of them. It is not enough, then, that 
we dissipate the charm, by a moral, and eloquent, 
and affecting exposure of its illusiveness. We 
must address to the eye of his mind another object, 
with a charm powerful enough to dispossess the 
first of its influences, and to engage him in some 
other prosecution as full of interest, and hope, and 
congenial activity, as the former. It is this which 
stamps an impotency on all moral and pathetic 
declamation about the hisignificance of the world. 
A man will no more consent to the misery of being 
without an object, because that object is a trifle, or 
of being without a pursuit, because that pursuit 
terminates in some frivolous or fugitive acquirement, 
than he will voluntarily submit himself to the 
torture, because that torture is to be of short 
duration. If to be vv^ithout desire and withou' 
exertion altogether, is a state of violence and 
discomfort, then the present desire, with its confr« 



POWER OF A NEW AFFECTION. 213 

spondent train of exertion, is not to be got rid of 
simply by destroying it. It must be by substituting 
another desire, and another line or habit of exertion 
in its place — and the most effectual way of with 
drawing the mind from one object, is not by turning 
it away upon desolate and unpeopled vacancy — 
but by presenting to its regards another object still 
more alluring. 

These remarks apply not merely to love con- 
sidered in its state of desire for an object not yet 
obtained. They apply also to love considered in 
its state of indulgence, or placid gratification, with 
an object already in possession. It is seldom that 
any of our tastes are made to disappear by a mere 
process of natural extinction. At least, it is very 
seldom, that this is done through the instrumentality 
of reasoning. It may be done by excessive pam- 
pering — but it is almost never done by the mere 
force of mental determination. But what cannot 
be thus destroyed, may be dispossessed — and one 
taste may be made to give way to another, and to 
lose its power entirely as the reigning affection of 
the mind. It is thus, that the boy ceases, at 
length, to be the slave of his appetite, but it is 
because a manlier taste has now brought it into 
subordination — and that the youth ceases to idolize 
pleasure, but it is because the idol of wealth has 
become the stronger and gotten the ascendancy — 
and that even the love of money ceases to have the 
mastery over the heart of many a thriving citizen, 
but it is because drawn into the whirl of city 
politics, another affection has been wrought into 
his moral system, and he is now lordi?d over by the 



214 POWER OF A NEW AFFECTIOW. 

\ove of power. There is not one of these transforma- 
tions in which the heart is left without an object. 
Its desire for one particular object may be conquered ; 
but as to its desire for having some one object or 
other, this is unconquerable. Its adhesion to that 
on which it has fastened the preference of ita 
regards, cannot willingly be overcome by the 
rending away of a simple separation. It can be 
done only by the application of something else, to 
which it may feel the adhesion of a still stronger 
and more powerful preference. Such is the 
grasping tendency of the human heart, that it roust 
have a something to lay hold of — and which, if 
wrested away without the substitution of another 
something in its place, would leave a void and a 
vacancy as painful to the mind, as hunger is to the 
natural system. It may be dispossessed of one 
object, or of any, but it cannot be desolated of all. 
Let there be a breathing and a sensitive heart, but 
without a liking and without affinity to any of the 
things that are around it; and, in a state of cheerless 
abandonment, it would be alive to nothing but the 
burden of its own consciousness, and feel it to be 
intolerable. It would make no difference to its 
owner, whether he dwelt in the midst of a gay and 
goodly world ; or, placed afar beyond the outskirts 
of creation, he dwelt a solitary unit in dark and 
unpeopled nothingness. The heart must have 
aomething to cling to — and never, by its own 
voluntary consent, will it so denude itself of all its 
attachments, that there shall not be one remaining 
object that can draw or solicit it. 

iTie .nisery of a heart thus bereft of all relish tot 



POWER OF A NEW AFFECTION. 215 

that which wont to minister enjoyment, is strikingly 
exeuipiified in those, who, satiated with indulgence, 
have been so belaboured, as it were, with the variety 
and the poignancy of the pleasurable sensations they 
have experienced, that they are at length fatigued 
out of all capacity for sensation whatever. The 
disease of ennui is more frequent in the French me- 
tropolis, where amusement is more exclusively the 
occupation of the higher classes, than it is in the 
British metropolis, where the longings of the heart 
are more diversified by the resources of business and 
politics. There are the votaries of fashion, who, in 
this wav, have at length become the victims of fashion- 
able excess — in whom the very multitude of their 
enjoyments, has at last extinguished their power of 
enjoyment — who, with the gratifications of art and 
nature at command, now look upon all that is around 
them with an eye of tastelessness — who, plied with 
the delights of sense and of splendour even to 
weariness, and incapable of higher delights, have 
come to the end of all their perfection, and like 
Solomon of old, found it to be vanity and vexation. 
The man whose heart has thus been turned into a 
desert, can vouch for the insupportable languor which 
must ensue, when one affection is thus plucked away 
from the bosom, without another to replace it. 
It is not necessary that a man receive pain from any 
thing, in order to become miserable. It is barely 
enough that he looks with distaste to every thing— 
and in that asylum which is the repository of minds 
out of joint, and where the organ of feeling as well 
as the organ of intellect, has been impaired, it is not 
in the cellof loudaud frantic outcries, where we shaU 



216 POWER OF A NEW AFFECTION. 

meet with the acme of menta. suffering. But thflt 
is the individual who outpeers in wretchedness all 
his fellows, who, throughout the whole expanse of 
nature and society, meets not an object that has at 
all the power to detain or to interest him ; who, 
neither in earth beneath nor in heaven above, 
knows of a single charm to which his heart can send 
forth one desirous or responding movement; to 
whom the world, in his eye a vast and empty deso- 
lation, has left him nothing but hisownconsciousne<5S 
to feed upon — dead to all that is without him, and 
alive to nothing but to the load of his own torpid 
and useless existence. 

It will now be seen, perhaps, why it is that the 
heart keeps by its present affections with so much 
tenacity — when the attempt is, to do them away by a 
mere process of extirpation. It will not consent to be 
so desolated. The strong man, whose dwelling-place 
is there, may be compelled to give way to another 
occupier — but unless another stronger than he, has 
power to dispossess and to succeed him, he will keep 
his present lodgment unviolable. The heart would 
revolt against its own emptiness. It could not bear 
to be so left in a state of waste and cheerless insipidity. 
The moralist who tries such a process of dispossession 
as this upon the heart, is thwarted at every step by 
the recoil of its own mechanism. You have all heard 
that Nature abhors a vacuum. Such at least is the 
nature of the heart, that though the room which is in 
it may change one inmate for another, it cannot be left 
void without the pain of most intolerable suffering. 
It is not enough then to argue the folly of an existing 
affection. It is not enough, in the terms of a forcibld 



POWER OF A NEW AFFECTION, 217 

or an affecting demonstration, to make ijood the 
evanescence of its object. It may not even be enough 
to associate the threats and the terrors of some 
coming vengeance, with the indulgence of it. The 
heart may still resist the every application, by obedi- 
ence to which, it would finally be conducted to a 
state so much at war with all its appetites as that of 
downright inanition. So to tear away an affection 
from the heart, as to leave it bare of all its regards 
and of all its preferences, were a hard and hopeless 
undertaking — and it would appear, as if the alone 
powerful engine of dispossession were to bring the 
mastery of another affection to bear upon it. 

We know not a more sweeping interdict upon 
the affections of Nature, than that which is delivered 
by the Apostle in the verse before us. To bid a 
man into whom there has not yet entered the great 
and ascendant influence of the principle of regenera- 
tion, to bid him withdraw his love from all the things 
that are in the world, is to bid him give up all the 
affections that are in his heart. The world is the 
all of a natural man. He has not a taste nor a 
desire, that points not to a something placed within 
the confines of its visible horizon. He loves nothing 
above it, and he cares for nothing beyond it ; and 
to bid him love not the world, is to pass a sentence 
of expulsion on all the inmates of his bosom. To 
estimate the magnitude and the difficulty of such a 
surrender, let us only think that it were just as 
arduous to prevail on him not to love wealth, which 
is but one of the things in the world, as to prevail on 
him to set wilful fire to his own property. This 
he might do with sore and painful reluctance, if he 

VUL. VI. K 



SljB POWER OF A NEW AFFECTION. 

saw that the salvation of his life hung upon it. 
But this he would do wiiiingiy, it he saw that anew 
property of tenfold value was instantly to emerge 
from the wreck of the old one. In this case there 
is something more than the mere displacement of an 
affection. There is the overbearing of one affection 
by another. But to desolate his heart of all love 
for the things of the world, without the substitution 
of any love in its place, were to him a process of as 
unnatural violence, as to destroy all the things that 
he has in the world, and give him nothing in their 
room. So that, if to love not the world be indis- 
pensable to one's Christianity, then the crucifixion 
of the old man is not too strong a term to mark that 
transition in his history, when all old things are 
done away and all things become new. 

We hope that by this time, you understand the 
impotency of a mere demonstration of this world's 
insignificance. Its sole practical effect, if it had 
any, would be to leave the heart in a state which 
to every heart is insupportable, and that is a mere 
state of nakedness and negation. You may re- 
member the fond and unbroken tenacity with which 
your heart has often recurred to pursuits, over the 
utter frivolity of which it sighed and wept but 
yesterday. The arithmetic of your short-lived 
days, may on Sabbath make the clearest impres« 
sion upon your understanding — and from his fancieil 
bed of death, may the preacher cause a voice lo 
descend in rebuke and mockery on all the pur- 
suits of earthliness — and as he pictures before you 
tfie fleeting generations of men, with the absorbinjf 
grave, whither all the joys and interests of the wond 



POWER OF A NEW AFFECTION. 219 

hasten to their sure and speedy oblivion, may you, 
touched and solemnized by his argument, feel fof 
a moment as if on the eve of a practical and per- 
manent emancipation from a scene of so much 
vanity. But the morrow comes, and the business 
of the world, and the objects of the world, and the 
moving forces of the world come along with it — and 
the machinery of the heart, in virtue of which it must 
have something to grasp, or something to adhere to, 
brings it under a kind of moral necessity to be 
actuated just as before — and in utter repulsion to- 
wards a state so unkindly as that of being frozen out 
both of delight and of desire, does it feel all the 
warmth and the urgency of its wonted solicitations — 
nor in the habit and history of the whole man, can we 
detect so much as one symptom of the new crea- 
ture — so that the church, instead of being to him 
a school of obedience, has been a mere sauntering 
place for the luxury of a passing and theatrical 
emotion ; and the preaching which is mighty to 
compel the attendance of multitudes, which is 
mighty to still and to solemnize the hearers into a 
kind of tragic sensibility, which is mighty in the 
play of variety and vigour that it can keep up 
around the imagination, is not mighty to the pulling 
down of strong holds. 

The love of the world cannot be expunged by 
a mere demonstration of the world's worthlessness. 
But may it not be supplanted by the love of that 
which is more worthy than itself? The heart 
cannot be prevailed upon to part with the world, 
by a simple act of resignation. But may not the 
tvyirt be prevailed upon to admit into its prefer- 



%2^ POWER OF A NEW AFFECTION. 

ence another, who shall subordinate the world. 
and bring it down from its wonted ascendancy? 
If the throne which is placed there must have an 
occupier, and the tyrant that now reigns has occupied 
it wrongfull}', he may not leave a bosom which 
would rather detain him than be left in desolation. 
But may he not give way to the lawful sovereign, 
appearing with every charm that can secure His 
willing admittance, and taking unto himself His 
great power to subdue the moral nature of man, 
and to reign over it ? In a word, if the way to 
disengage the heart from the positive love of one 
^reat and ascendant object, is to fasten it in posi- 
tive love to another, then it is not by exposing the 
worthlessness of the former, but by addressing to 
the mental eye the worth and excellence of the 
latter, that all old things arc to be done away and 
all things are to become new. 

To obliterate all our present affections by 
simply expunging them, and so as to leave the 
seat of them unoccupied, would be to destroy the 
old character, and to substitute no new character 
in its place. But when tbey take their departure 
upon the ingress of other visitors ; when they 
resign their sway to the power and the predomi- 
nance of new affections; when, abandoning the heart 
to solitude, they merely give place to a successor 
who turns it into as busy a residence of desire and 
interest and expectation as before — there is nothing 
in all this to thwart or to overbear any of the laws of 
our sentient nature — and we see how, in fullest 
accordance with the mechanism of the heart, a great 
moral revolution may be made to take place upon it. 



POWER OF A NEW AFFECTION. 221 

This, we trust, will explain the operation oi 
jhat charm which accompanies the effectual preach- 
ing of the gospel. The love of God and the love 
of the world, are two affections, not merely in a 
state of rivalship, but in a state of enmity — and that 
so irreconcilable, that they cannot dwell together in 
the same bosom. We have already affirmed how 
impossible it were for the heart, by any innate 
elasticity of its own, to cast the world away from 
it ; and thus reduce itself to a wilderness. The 
heart is not so constituted ; and the only way to 
dispossess it of an old affection, is by the expulsive 
power of a new one. Nothing can exceed the 
magnitude of the required change in a man's char- 
acter — when bidden as he is in the New Testament, 
to love not the world ; no, nor any of the things 
that are in the world — for this so comprehends all 
that is dear to him in existence, as to be equivalent 
to a command of self-annihilation. But the same 
revelation which dictates so mighty an obedience, 
places within our reach as mighty an instrument 
of obedience. It brings for admittance to the very 
door of our heart, an affection which once seated 
upon its throne, will either subordinate every 
previous inmate, or bid it away. Beside the 
world, it places before the eye of the mind Him 
who made the world and with this peculiarity, 
which is all its own — that in the Gospel do we so 
behold God, as that we may love God. It is 
there, and there only, where God stands revealed 
as an object of confidence to sinners — and where 
our desiie after Him is not chilled into apathy, by 
that barrier of human guilt which intercepts every 



222 POWER OF A NEW AFFECTION. 

approach that is not made to Him through th« 
appointed Mediator. It is the bringing in ot tnis 
better hope, whereby we draw nigh unto Goa — 
and to Uve without hope, is to hve without God ; 
and if the heart be without God, the world will 
then have all the ascendancy. It is God appre- 
hended by the believer as God in Christ, who alone 
can dispost it from this ascendancy. It is wlien 
He stands dismantled of the terrors which belong 
to Him as an offended lawgiver and when we are 
enabled by faith, which is His own gift, to see 
His glory in the face of Jesus Christ, and to hear 
His beseeching voice, as it protests good will to 
men, and entreats the return of all who will to » 
full pardon and a gracious acceptance — it is then, 
that a love paramount to the love of the world, and 
at length expulsive of it, first arises in the regene- 
rated bosom. It is when released from the spirit 
of bondage with which love cannot dwell, and 
when admitted into the number of God's children 
through the faith that is in Christ Jesus, the spirit 
of adoption is poured upon us — it is then that the 
heart, brought under the mastery of one great and 
predominant affection, is delivered from the tyranny 
of its former desires, in the only way in which 
deliverance is possible. And that faith which is 
revealed to us from heaven, as indispensable to a 
sinner's justification in the sight of God, is also the 
instrument of the greatest of all moral and spiritual 
achievements on a nature dead to the influence, and 
beyond the reach of every other application. 

Thus may we come to perceive what it is that 
makes the most effective kind of preaching. It 



POWEli OF A N£W AFFECTION. 223 

is not enough to hold out to *he world's eye the 
mirror of its own imperfections. It is not enough 
to come forth with a demonstration, however 
pathetic, of the evanescent character of all its 
enjoyments. It is not enough to travel the walk 
of experience along with you, and speak to your 
own conscience and your own recollection, of the 
deceitfulness of the heart, and the deceitfulness of 
all that the heart is set upon. There is many a 
bearer of the Gospel message, who has not shrewd- 
ness of natural discernment enough, and who has 
not power of characteristic description enough, and 
who has not the talent of moral delineation enough, 
to present you with a vivid and faithful sketch of 
the existing follies of society. But that very 
corruption which he has net the faculty of repre- 
senting in its visible details, he may practically be 
the instrument of eradicating in its principle. Let 
him be but a faithful expounder of the gospel 
testimony — unable as he may be to apply a descrip- 
tive hand to the character of the present world, let 
him but report with acciuracy the matter which 
revelation lias bi-ought to him from a distant world 
— unskilled as he is hi the work of so anatomizing 
the heart, as with the power of a novelist to create 
a graphical or impressive exhibition of the worthless- 
ness of its many affections — let him only deal in 
those mysteries of peculiar doctrine, on which the 
best of novelists have thrown the wantonness of 
their derision. He may not be able, with the eye 
of shrewd and satirical observation, to expose to 
the ready recognition of his hearers, the desii-es of 
^nr dliness — but with the tidings of the gospel in 



224 POWER OF A NEW AFFECTION. 

commission, he may wield the only engine that can 
extirpate them. He cannot do what some have 
done, when, as if by the hand of a magician, they 
have brought out to view, from the hidden recesses 
of our nature, the foibles and lurking appetites 

which belong to it But he has a truth in his 

possession, which into whatever heart it enters, 
will, like the rod of Aaron, swallow up them ah 
— and unqualified as he may be, to describe the 
old man in all the nicer shading of his natural and 
constitutional varieties, with him is deposited that 
ascendant influence under which the leading tastes 
and tendencies of the old man are destroyed, and 
he becomes a new creature in Jesus Christ our 
Lord. 

Let us not cease then to ply the only instru- 
ment of powerful and positive operation, to do 
away from you the love of the world. Let us try 
every legitimate method of finding access to your 
hearts for the love of Him who is greater than the 
world. For this purpose, let us, if possible, clear 
away that shroud of unbelief which so hides and 
darkens the face of the Deity. Let us insist on 
His claims to your aflfection — and whether in the 
shape of gratitude, or in the shape of esteem, let 
us never cease to affirm, that in the whole of that 
wondrous economy, the purpose of which is to reclaim 
a sinful world unto Himself — he, the God of love, 
80 sets Himself forth in characters of endearment, 
that nought but faith, and nought but understand- 
ing, are wanting, on your part, to call forth ine 
love of your hearts back again. 

And here let us advert to the incredulity of a 



POWER OF A NEW AFFECTION. 225 

worldly man ; when he brings his own sound and 
secular experience to bear upon the high doctrines 
of Christianity — when he looks on regeneration 
as a thing impossible — when feeling as he does, 
the obstinacies of his own heart on the side of 
things present, and casting an intelligent eye, much 
exercised perhaps in the observation of human 
life, on the equal obstinacies of all who are around 
him, he pronounces this whole matter about the 
crucifixion of the old man, and the resurrection of 
a new man in his place, to be in downright 
opposition to all that is known and witnessed of 
the real nature of humanity. We think that we 
have seen such men, who, firmly trenched in their 
own vigorous and homebred sagacity, and shrewdly 
regardful of all that passes before them through 
the week, and upon the scenes of ordinary bushiess, 
look on that transition of the heart by which it 
gradually dies unto time, and awakens 'n all the 
life of a new-felt and ever-growing desire towards 
God, as a mere Sabbath speculation; and who 
thus, with all their attention engrossed upon the 
concerns of earthliness, continue unmoved, to the 
end of their days, amongst the feelings, and the 
appetites, and the pursuits of earthliness. If the 
thought of death, and another state of being after 
it, comes across them at all, it is not with a change 
so radical as that of being born again, that they 
ever connect the idea of preparation. They have 
some vague conception of its being quite enough 
that they acquit themselves in some decent and 
tolerable way of their relative obligations ; an'i 
that, upon the strength of some such social wxvj 
k2 



226 POWER OF A NEW AFFECTION. 

domestic moralities as are often realized by him 
into whose heart the love of God has never entered, 
they will be transplanted in safety from this w^orid, 
where God is the Being with whom it may almost 
be said that they have had nothing to do, to that 
world where God is the Being with whom they 
will have mainly and immediately to do throughout 
all eternity. They admit all that is said of the 
utter vanity of time, when taken up with as a 
resting place. But they resist every application 
made upon the heart of man, with the view of so 
shifting its tendencies, that it shall not henceforth 
find in the interests of time, all its rest and all its 
refreshment. They, in fact, regard such an 
attempt as an enterprise that is altogether aerial 
— and with a tone of secular wisdom, caught from 
the familiariligs of every-day experience, do they 
see a visionary character in all that is said of 
setting our affections on the things that are above; 
and of walking by faith; and of keeping our hearts 
in such a love of God as shall shut out from them 
the love of the world ; and of haviwg no confidence 
in the flesh ; and of so renouncing earthly things 
as to have our conversation in heaven. 

Now, it is altogether worthy of being remarked 
of those men who thus disrelish spiritual Christi- 
anity, and, in fact, deem it an impracticable ac- 
quirement, how much of a piece their incredulity 
about the demands of Christianity, and their in- 
credulity about the doctrines of Christianity, are with 
one another. No wonder that they feel the work 
of the New Testament to be beyond their strength, 
80 long as they hold the words of the New Testa* 



I 



POWER OF A NEW AFFECTION. 227 

ment to be beneath their attention. Neither thej 
nor any one else can dispossess the heart of an old 
affection, but by the expulsive power of a ne'vV 
one — and, if that new affection be the love of God, 
neither they nor any one else can be made to 
entertain it, but on such a representation of the 
Deity, as shall draw the heart of the sinner 
towards Him. Now it is just their unbelief which 
screens from the discernment of their minds this 
representation. They do not see the love of God 
in sending His Son unto the world. They do not 
see the expression of His tenderness to men, in 
sparin.g Him not, but giving Him up unto the 
death for us all. They do not see the sufficiency 
of the atonement, or the sufferings that were 
endured by Him who bore the burden that sinners 
should have borne. They do not see the blended 
uoliness and compassion of the Godhead, in that 
He passed by the transgressions of His creatures, 
yet could not pass them by without an expiation. 
It is a mystery to them, how a man should pass 
to the state of godliness from a state of nature — 
but had they only a believing view of God mani- 
fest in the flesh, this would resolve for them the 
whole mystery of godliness. As it is, they cannot 
get quit of their old affections, because they are 
out of sight from all those truths which have influ- 
ence to raise a new one. They are like the chil- 
dren of Israel in the land of Egypt, when required 
to make bricks without straw — they cannot love 
God, while they want the only food which car 
aliment this affection in a sinner's bosom — and 
however great their errors may be both in resisting 



228 POWER OF A NEW AFFECTION. 

the demands of the Gospel as impracticable, and in 
rejecting the doctrines of the Gospel as inadmissible, 
yet there is not a spiritual man (and it is the pre- 
rogative of 1 im who is spiritual to judge all men) 
who will not perceive that there is a consistency 
in these errors. 

But if there be a consistency in the errors, iu 
like manner is there a consistency in the truths 
which are opposite to them. The man who 
believes in the peculiar doctrines, will readily bow 
to the peculiar demands of Christianity. When 
he is told to love God supremely, this may startle 
another ; but it will not startle him to whom God 
has been revealed in peace, and in pardon, and in 
sl\ the freeness of an offered reconciliation. When 
t Id to shut out the world from his heart, this may 
b impossible with him who has nothing to replace 
it — but not impossible with him, who has found 
i God a sure and a satisfying portion. When 
t Id to withdraw his affections from the things that 
are beneath, this were laying an order of self- 
extinction upon the man, who knows not another 
quarter in the whole sphere of his contemplation, 
to which he could transfer them — but it were not 
grie.vous to him whose view has been opened up 
ti" ttte loveliness and glory of the things that are 
p n ve, and can there find for every feeling of his 
po.xl, a most ample and delighted occupation. 
vVhen told to look not to the things that are seen 
.i>i temj oral, this were blotting out the light of 
an that i[j visible from the prospect of him in whose 
eye there is a wall of partition between guilty 
nature «»nd the joys oi eternity — but he who 



POWER OF A NEV '.FFErT.'jV, 229 

believes that Christ hath broken down this walJ, 
finds a gathering radiance upon his soul, as he looka 
onwards in faith to the things that are unseen and 
eternal. Tell a man to be holy — and how can he 
compass such a performance, when his alone 
fellowship with holiness is a fellowship of despair ? 
It is the atonement of the cross reconciling the 
holiness of the lawgiver with the safely of the 
offender, that hath opened the way for a sancti- 
fying influence into the sinner's heart ; and he can 
take a kindred impression from the character of 
God now brought nigh, and now at peace with him. 
Separate the demand from the doctrine ; and you 
have either a system of ri ^hteousness that is 
impracticable, or a barren orthodoxy. Bring the 
demand and the doctrine together — and the tru.:; 
disciple of Christ is able to do the one, through 
the other strengthening him. The motive is 
adequate to the movement ; and the bidden obe- 
dience of the Gospel is not be_,ond the measure of 
his strength, just because tho doctrine of the 
Gospel is not beyond the measure of his ac- 
ceptance. The shield of faith, and the hope of 
salvation, and the Word of God, and the girdle 
of truth — these are the armour that he has put on; 
and with these the battle is won, and the eminence 
is reached, and the man stands on the vantage 
ground of a new field, and a new prospect. The 
effect is great, but the cause is equal to it — and 
stupendous as this moral resurrection to the pre- 
cepts of Christianity undoubtedly is, there is an 
element of strength enough to give it being and 
continuance in the principles of Christianity. 



230 POWER OF A NEW AFFECTIOIT. 

The object of the Gospel is both to pacify the 
sinner's conscience, and to purify his heart; and it 
is of importance to observe, that what mars the one 
of these objects, mars the other also. The best 
way of casting out an impure affection is to admit 
1 pure one ; and by the love of what is good, to expeJ 
the love of what is evil. Thus it is, that the freer the 
Gospel, the more sanctifying is the Gospel; and the 
more it is received as a doctrine of grace, the more 
will it be felt as a doctrine according to godliness. This 
is one of the secrets of the Christian life, that the more 
a man holds of God as a pensioner, the greater is the 
payment of service that he renders back again. On 
the tenure of "Dothisandlive,"aspiritoffearfulnes3 
is sure to enter; and the jealousies of a legal bargain 
chase away all confidence from ♦^he intercourse be- 
tw een God and man ; and the creature striving to be 
square and even w ith his Creator, is, in fact, pur- 
suing all the while his own selfishness, instead of 
God's glory ; and with all the conformities which he 
labours to accomplish, the soul of obedience is not 
there, the mind is not subject to the law of God, nor 
indeed under such an economy ever can be. It is only 
when, as in the Gospel, acceptance is bestowed as 
a present, without money and withoutprice, that the 
security which man feels in God is placed beyond 
the reach of disturbance — or, that he can repose in 
Him, as one friend reposes in another — or, that any 
liberal and generous understanding can be estab- 
lished betwixt them — the one party rejoicing over 
the other to do him good — the other finding that 
the truest gladness of his heart lies in the impulse 
of a gratitude, by which it is awakened tothecbaTBW 



POWER OF A NEW AFFECTION. 231 

cf a new moral existence. Salvation by grace-.^ 
salvation by free grace — salvation not of works, but 
according to the mercy of God — salvation on such 
a footing is not more indispensable to the deliver- 
ance of our persons from the hand of justice, than 
it is to the deliverance of our hearts from the chill 
and the weight of ungodliness. Retain a single 
shred or fragment of legality with the Gospel, and 
we raise a topic of distrust between man and God. 
We take away from the power of the Gospel to 
melt and to conciliate. For this purpose, the freer 
it is, the better it is. That very peculiarity which 
so many dread as the germ of antinomianism, is, in 
fact, the germ of a new spirit, and a new inclination 
against it. Along with the light of a free Gospel, 
does there enter the love of the Gospel, which, ir. 
proportion as we impair the freeness, we are sure 
to chase away. And never does the sinner find 
within himself so mighty a moral transformation, as 
when under the belief that he is saved by grace, 
he feels constrained thereby to offer his heart a 
devoted thing, and to deny ungodliness. 

To do any work in the best manner, we should 
make use of the fittest tools for it. And we trust, 
that what has been said may serve in some degree, 
for the practical guidance of those who would like 
to reach the great moral achievement of our text — 
but feel that the tendencies and desires of Nature 
are too strong for them. We know of no other way 
by which to keep the love of the Avorld out of our 
heart, than to keep in our hearts the love of God — 
and no other way by which to keep our hearts in 
the love of God, than building ourselves up on our 



232 TO'^T.R OF A VIEW AFFECTION- 

most holy faith. That denial of the world which ii 
not possible to him that dissents from the Gospel 
testimony, is possible even as all things are possible, 
to him that beiieveth. To try this without faith 
is to work without the right tool or the right in- 
strument. But faith worketh by love ; and the way 
of expelling from the heart the love which trans- 
gresseth the law, is to admit into its receptacles 
the love which fulfillcth the law. 

Conceive a man to be standing on the margin 
of this green world ; and that, when he looked 
towards it, he saw abundance smiling upon every 
field, and all the blessings which earth can afford 
scattered in profusion throughout every family, 
and the light of the sun sweetly resting upon all 
the pleasant habitations, and the joys of human 
companionship brightening many a happy circle of 
society — conceive this to be the general character 
cf the scene upon one side of his contemplation ; 
and that on the other, beyond the verge of the 
goodly planet on which he was situated, he could 
descry nothing but a dark and fathomless unknown. 
Think you that he would bid a voluntary adieu to 
all the brightness and all the beauty that were before 
him upon earth, and commit himself to the frightful 
solitude away from it ? Would he leave its peopled 
dwelling places, and become a solitary wanders ■ 
through the fields of nonentity ? If space offered him 
nothing but a wilderness, wouldhe for itabandon the 
homebred scenes of life and of cheerfulness that lay 
80 near, and exerted such a power of urgency to 
detain him? Would not he cling to the regions oi 
sense, and of life, and of society ? — and shrinking 



POWER OP A NEW AFFECTION. 233 

away fi cm the desolation that was beyond it, wculd 
not he be glad to keep his firm footing on the territorj 
of this world, and to take shelter under the silver 
canopy that was stretched over it ? 

But If, during the time of his contemplation, some 
happy island of the blest had floated by ; and there 
had burst upon his senses the light of its surpassing 
glories, and its sounds of sweeter melody ; and he 
clearly saw, that there, a purer beauty rested upon 
every field, and a more heartfelt joy spread itself 
among all the families ; and he could discern there, 
a peace, and a piety, and a benevolence, which put 
a moral gladness into every bosom, and united the 
whole society in one rejoicing sympathy with each 
other, and with the beneficent Father of them all. 
— Could he farther see, that pain and mortality were 
there unknown ; and above all, that signals of welcome 
were hung out, and an avenue of communication 
was made for him — perceive you not, that what was 
before the wilderness, would become the land of 
invitation ; and that now the world would be tlie 
wilderness ? What unpeopled space could not do, 
can be done by space teeming with beatific scenes, 
and beatific society. And let the existing tendencies 
of the heart be what they may to the scene that is 
near and visibly around us, still if another stood 
revealed to the prospect of man, either through the 
channel of faith, or through the channel of his senses 
— then, without violence done to the constitution oi 
his moral nature, maybe die unto the present world, 
and live to the lovelier world that stands in tho 
distance away from it. 



^134 RESTLESSNESS OF HUMAN AMBl'llON. 

DISCOURSE X. 

THE RESTLESSNESS OF HUMAiN AMBITION 



* How gay ye to my soul, Flee as a bird to your mountain ?— -O 
that I had the wings of a dove, that I may fly away, and be at 
rest " — Psalm xi. 1. and Ivr. 6. 

To all those who are conversant in the scenery of 
external nature, it is evident, that an object to be 
seen to the greatest advantage must be placed at a 
certain distance from the eye of the observer. The 
poor man's hut, though all within be raggedness 
and disorder, and all around it be full of the most 
nauseous and disgusting spectacles — yet, if seen at 
a sufficient distance, may appear a sweet and inte- 
resting cottage. That field where the thistle grows, 
and the face of which is deformed by the wild ex- 
uberance of a ranic and pernicious vegetation, may 
delight the eye of a distant spectator by the loveli- 
ness of its verdure. That lake, whose waters are 
corrupted, and whose banks poison the air by their 
marshy and putrid exhalations, may charm the eye 
of an enthusiast, who views it from an adjoining 
eminence, and dwells with rapture on the quietness 
of its surface, and oij the beauty of its outline — its 
sweet border fringed with the gayest colouring of 
Nature, and on which spring lavishes its finest 
ornaments. All is the effect of distance. It softens 
the harsh and disgusting features of every object. 
What is gross and ordinary, it can dress in the most 



RESTLESSNESS OF HUMAN AMBITION. 235 

i-oraantic attractions. The country hamlet it can 
transform into a paradise of beauty, in spite of the 
abominations that are at every door, and the angry 
brawlings of the men and the women who occupy 
it. All that is loathsome or offensive, is softened 
down by the power of distance. We see the 
emoke rising in fantastic wreaths through the pure 
air, and the village spire peeping from among 
the thick verdure of the trees which embosom it. 
The fancy of our sentimentalist swells with plea- 
sure, and peace and pitty supply their delight- 
ful associations to complete the harmony of the 
picture. 

This principle may serve to explain a feeling 
which some of us may have experienced. On a 
fine day, when the sun threw its unclouded splen- 
dours over a whole neighbourhood, did we never 
form a wish that our place could be transferred to 
some distant and more beautiful part of the land- 
scape ? Did the idea never rise in our fancy, that 
the people who sport on yon sunny bank are 
happier than ourselves — that we should like to be 
buried in that distant grove, and forget, for a while, 
in sil-ence and in solitude, the distractions of the 
world — that we should like to repose by yon beau- 
tiful rivulet, and soothe every anxiety of our heart 
by the gentleness of its murmurs — that we should 
like to transport ourselves to the distance of miles, 
and there enjoy the peace which resides in some 
Bweet and sheltered concealment ? In a word, 
was there no secret aspiration of the soul for 
another place than what we actually occupied ? 
Instead of resting in the quiet enjoyment of our 



2J6 RESTLESSNESS OF HUMAN AMBITION. 

present situation, did not our wishes wander abroad 
and around us — and were not we ready to exclaim 
with the Psalmist in the text, " O that I had the 
Avings of a dove; for I would fly to yonder mountain, 
and be at rest ?" 

But what is of most importance to be observed 
is, that even when we have reached the mountain, 
rest is as far from us as ever. As we get nearer 
the wished-for spot, the fairy enchantments in 
which distance had arrayed it, gradually disappear; 
when we at last arrive at our object, the illusion is 
entirely dissipated ; and we are grieved to find, that 
we have carried the same principle of restlessness 
and discontent along with us. 

Now, what is true of a natural landscape, is also 
true of that moral landscape, which is presented 
to the eye of the mind when it contemplates human 
life, and casts a wide survey over the face of human 
society. The position which I myself occupy is 
seen and felt with all its disadvantages. Its 
vexations come home to ray feelings with all the 
certainty of experience. I see it before mine eyes 
with a vision so near and intimate, as to admit of 
no colouring, and to preclude the exercise of fancy. 
It is only in those situations which are without 
me, where the principle of deception operates, and 
where the vacancies of an imperfect experience 
are filled up by the power of imagination, ever 
ready to summon the fairest forms of pure and 
unmingled enjoyment. It is all resolvable, as 
before, into the principle of distance. I am too far 
removed to see the smaller features of the object 
which I contemplate. I overlook the operation of 



RESTLESSNESS OF HUMAN AMBITION. 237 

thnse minuter causes, which expose every situation 
of human life to the inroads of misery and disap- 
pointment. Mine eye can only take in the hroader 
outlines of the object before me ; and it consigns 
to fancy -the task of filling them up with its finest 
colouring. 

Am I unlearned? I feel the disgrace of ignorance, 
and sigh for the name and the distinctions of 
philosophy. Do I stand upon a literary eminence? 
1 feel the vexations of rivalship, and could almost 
renounce the splendours of my dear-bought reputa- 
tion for the peace and shelter which insignificance 
bestows. Am I poor ? I riot hi fancy upon the 
gratifications of luxury ; and think how great I 
would be, if invested with all the consequence ot 
wealth and of patronage. Am I rich ? I sicken 
at the deceitful splendour which surrounds me ; 
and am at times tempted to think, that I would 
liave been happier far if born to a humbler station, 
I had been trained to the peace and innocence of 
poverty. Am I immersed in business? I repine 
at the fatigues of employment ; and envy the lot 
of those who have every hour at their disposal, 
and can spend all their time in the sweet relaxa- 
tions of amusement and society. Am I exempted 
from the necessity of exertion ? I feel the corroding 
anxieties of indolence, and attempt in vain to escape 
that weariness and disgust which useful and regular 
occupation can alone save me from. Am I single? 
i feel the dreariness of solitude, and my fancy 
warms at the conception of a dear and domestic 
circle. Am I embroiled in the cares of a family ? 
I am tormented with the perverseness or ingratitude 



238 RESTLESSNESS OF HUMAN AMBITION. 

of those around me ; and sigh in all the bitterness 
of repentance, over the rash and irrecoverable step 
by which I have renounced for ever the charms of 
independence. 

This, in fact, is the grand principle of humaa 
ambition; and it serves to explain both its r«stie8S- 
ness and its vanity. What is present is seen in all 
its minuteness ; and we overlook not a single 
article in the train of little drawbacks, and 
difficulties, and disappointments. What is distant 
is seen under a broad and general aspect ; and the 
illusions of fancy are substituted in those places 
which we cannot fill up with the details of actual 
observation. What is present fills me with disgust. 
What is distant allures me to enterprise. 1 sigh 
for an office, the business of which is more congenial 
to my temper. I fix mine eye on some lofty 
eminence in the scale of preferment. I spurn at 
the condition which I now occupy, and I look 
around me and above me. The perpetual tendency 
is not to enjoy our actual position, but to get 
away from it — and not an individual amongst us 
who does not every day of his life join in the aspi- 
ration of the Psalmist, " O that I had the wings 
of a dove, that I may fly to yonder mountain, and 
be at rest." 

But the truth is, that we never rest. The 
most regular and stationary being on the face of 
the earth, has something to look forward to, and 
something to aspire after. He must realize that 
sum to which he annexes the idea of a competency. 
He must add that piece of ground which he thinks 
rjcessary to complete the domain of which he ia 



I 



RESTLESSNESS OF HUMAN AMBITION. 239 

the proprietor. He must secure that office which 
confers so much honour and emolument upon the 
holder. Even after every eifort of personal ambition 
is exhausted, he has friends and children to provide 
for. The care of those who are to come after 
him, lands him in a never-ending train of hopes, 
and wishes, and anxieties. O that I could gain 
the vote and the patronage of this honourable 
acquaintance — or, that I could secure the political 
influence of that great man who honours me with 
an occasional call, and addressed me the other day 
with a cordiality which was quite bewitching — or 
that my young friend could succeed in his competi- 
tion for the lucrative vacancy to which I have been 
looking forward, for years, with all the eagerness 
which distance and uncertainty could inspire — or 
that we could fix the purposes of that capricious 
and unaccountable wanderer, who, of late indeed 
has been very particular in his attentions, and 
whose connexion we acknowledge, in secret, world 
be an honour and an advantage to our family — or, 
at all events, let me heap wealth and aggrandizement 
on that son, who is to be the representative of my 
name, and is to perpetuate that dynasty whicn I 
have had the glory of establishing. 

This restless ambition is not peculiar to any one 
class of society. A court only offers to one's 
notice a more exalted theatre for the play of 
rivalship and political enterprise. In the bosom 
of a cottage, we may witness the operation of the 
very same principle, only directed to objects of 
greater insignificance — and though a place for my 
giri, or an apprenticeship for my boy, be aU that 



240 RESTLESSNESS OF HUMAN AMBITION. 

I aspire after, yet an enlightened observer of the 
human character will perceive in it the same eager- 
ness of competition, the same jealousy, the same 
malicious attempts to undermine the success of a 
more likely pretender, the same busy train of 
passions and anxieties which animate the exertions 
of him who struggles for precedency in the cabinet, 
and lifts his ambitijus eye to che management ot 
an empire. 

This is the universal property of our nature. 
In the whole circle of our experience, did we ever 
see a man sit down to the full enjoyment of the 
present, without a hope or a wish unsatisfied? 
Did he carry in his mind no reference to futurity 
— no longing of the soul after some remote or 
inaccessible object — no day-dream which played 
its enchantments around him, and which even when 
accomplished, left him nothing more than the 
delirium ot" a momentary triumph ? Did we never 
see him, after the bright illusions of novelty were 
over — when the present object had lost its charm, 
and the distant begun to practise its allurements — 
when some gay vision of futurity had hurried him on 
to a new enterprise, and in the fatigues of a restless 
ambition, he felt a bosom as oppressed with care, 
and a heart as anxious and dissatisfied as ever 5* 

This is the true, though the carious, and we 
had almost said, the farcical picture of human life. 
Look into the heart which is the seat of feeling, 
and we there perceive a perpetual tendency to 
enjoyment, but not enjoyment itself — the cheerful- 
ness of hope, but not the happiness of actual pos- 
iession. The present is but an instant of time. 



RESTLESSNESS OF HUMAN AMBITION. 24 

The moment that we call it our own, it abandoiia 
us. It is not the actual sensation which occupies 
the mind. It is what is to come next. Man lives 
in futurity. The pleasurable feeling of the moment 
forms almost no part of his happiness. It is not 
the reality of to-day which interests his heart. 
It is the vision of to-morrow. It is the distant 
object on which fancy has thrown its deceitful 
splendour. When to-morrow comes, the animating 
hope is transformed into the dull and insipid reality. 
As the distant object draws near, it becomes cold 
and tasteless, and uninteresting. The only way 
in which the mind can support itself, is by recurring 
to some new anticipation. This may give buoy- 
ancy for a time — but it will share the fate of all its 
predecessors, and be the addition of another folly 
to the wretched train of disappointments that have 
gone before it. 

What a curious object of contemplation to a 
superior being, who casts an eye over this lower 
world, and surveys the busy restless and unceas- 
ing operations of the people who swarm upon its 
surface. Let him select any one individual amongst 
us, and confine his attention to him as a specimen 
of the whole. Let him pursue him through the 
intricate variety of his movements, for he is never 
stationary ; see him with his eye fixed upon some 
distant object, and struggling to arrive at it ; see 
him pressing forward to some eminence which 
perpetually recedes away from him ; see the inex- 
plicable being, as he runs in full pursuit of some 
glittering bauble, and on the moment he reaches 
it, throws it behind him, and it is forgotten ; see 

VOL. VI. h 



242 RESTLESSNESS OF HUMAN AMBITION 

him unmindful of his past experience, and hurrying 
nis footsteps to some new object with the same 
eagerness and rapidity as ever; compare the ecstasy 
of liope with the hfelessness of possession, and 
observe the whole history of his day to be made 
up of one fatiguing race of vanity, and restlessness, 
and disappointment ; 

" And, like the glittering of an idiot's toy, 
Doth fancy mock his vows." 

To complete the unaccountable history, let us 
look to its termination. Man is irregular in his 
movements, but this does not hinder the regularity 
of Nature. Time will not stand still to look at 
us. It moves at its own invariable pace. The 
winged moments fly in swift succession over us. 
The great luminaries which are suspended on high, 
perform their cycles in the heaven. The sun 
describes his circuit in the firmament, and the 
space of a few revolutions will bring every man 
among us to his destiny. The decree passes 
abroad against the poor child of infatuation. It 
meets him in the full career of hope and of enter- 
prise. He sees the dark curtain of mortality fall- 
ing upon the world, and upon all its interests. 
That busy, restless heart, so crowded with its plans, 
and feelings, and anticipations forgets to play, and 
all its fluttering anxieties are hushc«i tor ever. 

Where then is that resting place which the 
Psalmist aspired after ? What are we to mean 
by that mountain, that wilderness, to which he 
prayed that the wings of a dove may convey him, 
afar from the noise and distractions of the world. 



RESTLESSNESS OF HUMAN AMBITION. 243 

and hasten his escape from the windy stora - and 
the tempest? Is there no object, in the -whole 
round of human enjoyment, which can give rest to 
the agitated spirit of man — where he might sit 
down in the fulness of contentment, after he has 
reached it, and bid a final adieu to the cares and 
fatigues of ambition ? Is this longing of the mind 
a principle of his nature, which no gratification can 
extinguish ? Must it condemn him to perpetual 
agitation, and to the wild impulses of an ambition 
which is never satisfied ? 

We allow that exercise is the health of the 
jiind. It is better to engage in a trifling pursuit, 
if innocent, than to watch the melancholy progress 
of time, and drag out a weary existence in all the 
languor of a consuming indolence. But nobody 
will deny that it is better still, if the pursuit in 
which we are engaged be not a trifling one — if it 
conduct to some lasting gratification — if it lead to 
some object, the possession of which confers more 
happiness than the mere prospect — if the mere 
pleasure of the chase is not the only recompense 
— but where, in addition to this, we secure some 
reward proportioned to the fatigue of the exercise, 
and that justifies the eagerness with which we 
embarked in it. So long as the exercise is innocent, 
better do something than be idle : but better still, 
when the something we do, leads to a valuable and 
important termination. Any thing rather than the 
ignoble condition of that mind which feels the 
burden of itself — and which knows not how to 
dispose of the weary hours that hang so oppres- 
sively upon it. But there is certainly a ground of 



244 RESTLESSNESS OF HUMAN AMBITION. 

preference in the objects which invite us to exertion 
— and better far to fix upon that object which leaves 
happiness and satisfaction behind it, than dissipate 
our vigour in a pursuit which terminates in nothing 
— and where the mere pleasure of occupation is the 
only circumstance to recommend it. When we 
talk of the vanity of ambition, we do not propose 
to extinguish the principles of our nature, but to 
give them a more useful and exalted direction. A 
state of hope and of activity is the element of man 
— and all that we propose, is to withdraw his hope 
from the deceitful objects of fancy, and to engage 
his activity in the pursuit of real and permanent 
enjoyments. 

Man must have an object to look forward to. 
Without this incitement the mind languishes! It 
is thrown out of its element ; and, in this unnatural 
suspension of its powers, it feels a dreariness and 
a discomfort far more unsufFerable, than it ever 
experienced from the visitations of a real or positive 
calamity. If such an object do not offer, he will 
create one for himself. The mere possession of 
wealth, and of all its enjoyments, will not satisfy 
him. Possession carries along with it the dulness 
of certainty ; and to escape from this dulness, he 
will transform it into an uncertainty — he wlu 
embark it in a hazardous speculation, or he wi'.l 
stake it at the gaming-table ; and from no other 
principle than that he may exchange the listlessnes* 
of possession, for the animating sensations of hope 
and of enterprise. It is a paradox in the moral 
constitution of man ; but the experience of every 
(lay confirms it — that man follows what he knov^ 



RESTLKSSNESS OF HUMAN AMBITION. 245 

to be a delusion, with as much eagerness, as if 
he were assured of its reaUty. Put the question 
to him, and he will tell us, that if we were to lay 
before him all the profits which his fancy anticipates, 
he would long as much as ever for some new 
speculation ; or, in other words, be as much dissa- 
tisfied as ever with the position which he actually 
occupies — and yet, with his eye perfectly open to 
this circumstance, will he embark every power 
of his mind in the chase of what he knows to be a 
mockery and a phantom. 

Now, to find fault with man for the pleasure 
which he derives from the mere excitement of 
a distant object, would be to find fault with the 
constitution of his nature. It is not the general 
principle of his activity which we condemn. It 
is the direction of that activity to a useless and 
unprofitable object. The mere happiness of the 
pursuit does not supersede the choice of the ob- 
ject. Even though we were to keep religion out 
of sight altogether, and bring the conduct of man 
to the test of worldly principles, we still presuppose 
a ground of preference in the object. Why is the 
part of the sober and industrious tradesman pre- 
ferred to that of the dissipated gambler ? Both 
feel the delights of amind fullx- occupied with some- 
thing to excite and to animate. But the exertions 
of the one lead to the safe enjoyment of a com- 
petency. The exertions of the other lead to an 
object which, at best, is precarious, and often land 
us in the horrors of poverty and disgrace. The 
mere j)leasure of exertion is not enough to justify 
every kind of it : we must ook forward to the ob 



246 RESTLESSNESS OF HUMAN AMBITION. 

ject and the termination — and it is the judicious 
choice of the object which, even in the estimation 
of worldly wisdom, forms the great point of dis- 
tinction betwixt prudence and folly. Now, all 
that we ask of you, is to extend the application of 
the same principle to a life of religion. Compare 
the wisdom of the children of light, with the wis- 
dom of a blind and worldly generation — the pru- 
dence of the Christian who labours for immortality, 
with the prudence of him who labours for the 
objects of a vain and perishable ambition. Con- 
trast the littleness of time, with the greatness of 
eternity — the restless and unsatisfying pleasures of 
the world, with the enjoyments of heaven so pure, 
p« substantial, so unfading — and tell us which plays 
the higher game — he, all whose anxiety is frittered 
^way on the pursuits of a scene that is ever shift- 
ing, and ever transitory ; or he, who contemplates 
the life of man in all its magnitude; who acts upon 
the wide and comprehensive survey of its interests, 
and takes into his estimate the mighty roll of innu- 
merable ages. 

There is no resting-place to be found on this 
side of death. It is the doctrine of the Bible, and 
all experience loudly proclaims it. We do not 
ask you to listen to the complaints of the poor, or 
the murmurs of the disappointed. Take your 
lesson from the veriest favourite of fortune. See 
him placed in a prouder eminence than he ever 
aspired after. See him arrayed in brighter 
colours than ever dazzled his early imagination. 
See him surrounded with all the homage that fame 
and flattery can bestow — and after you have 



RESTLESSNESS OF HUMAN AMBITION. 24? 

Buffered this parading exterior to practise its de« 
ceitfulness upon you, enter into his solitude — ^mark 
his busy, restless, dissatisfied eye, as it wanders 
uncertain on every object — -enter into his mind, 
and tell me if repose or enjoyment be there — see 
him the poor victim of chagrin and disquietude — 
mark his heart as it nauseates the splendour which 
encompasses him — and tell us, if you have not 
learned in the truest and most affecting characters, 
that even in the full tide of a triumphant ambition, 
** man labours for the meat which perisheth, and 
for the food which satisfieth not." 

What meaneth this restlessness of our nature ? 
What meaneth this unceasing activity which longs 
for exercise and employment, even after every ob- 
ject is gained, which first roused it to enterprise i* 
What mean those unmeasurable longings, which 
no gratification can extinguish, and which still con- 
tinue to agitate the heart of man, even in the ful- 
ness of plenty and of enjoyment. If they mean 
any thing at all, they mean, that all which this 
world can offer, is not enough to fill up his capacity 
for happiness — that time is too small for him, and 
he is born for something beyond it — that the scene 
of his earthly existence is too limited, and he is 
formed to expatiate in a wider and a grander theatre 
. — that a nobler destiny is reserved for him — and 
that to accomplish the purpose of his being, he 
must soar above the littleness of the world, and 
aim at a loftier prize. 

It forms the peculiar honour and excellence of 
religion, that it accommodates to this property of 
our nature — that it holds out a prize suited to our 



248 RESTLESSNESS OF HUMAN AMBITION. 

high calling — that there is a grandeur in its objects, 
which can fill and surpass the imagination — that it 
dignifies the present scene by connecting it with 
eternity — that it reveals to the eye of faith the 
glories of an unperishable world — and how, from 
the high eminencies of heaven, a cloud of witnesses 
are looking down upon earth, not as a scene for 
the petty anxieties of time, but as a splendid 
theatre for the ambition of immortal spirita. 



ADVANTAGES OF CHRISTIAN KNOWIEDGE. 249 



DISCOURSE XI. 

ON THE ADVANTAGES OF CHRISTIAN KNOW- 
LEDGE TO THE LOWER ORDERS OF SOCIETTi 



" Better is a poor and a wise child than an old and foolish kin^ 
who will no more be admonished." — Ecclesiastes iv. 13. 

There is no one topic on which the Bible, 
throughout the variety of its separate compo- 
sitions, maintains a more lucid and entire con- 
sistency of sentiment, than the superiority of 
moral over all physical and all external distine- 
t'.ons. This lesson is frequently urged in the 
Old Testament, and as frequently reiterated in 
the New. There is a predominance given in 
both to wovth, and to wisdom, and to principle, 
which leads us to understand, that within the 
compass of human attainment, there is an object 
placed before us of a higher and more estimable 
character than all the objects of a common-place 
ambition — that wherever there is mind, there 
stands associated with it a nobler and more abiding 
interest than all the aggrandizements which wealth 
or rank can bestow — that within the limits of the 
moral and intellectual department of our nature, 
there is a commodity which money cannot purchase, 
and possesses a more sterling excellence than all 
which money can command. This ^reference oi 
man viewed in his essential attributes, to man 
viBwed according to tne variable accessaries by 



250 ADVANTAGES OF CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE, 

\vhlch he is surrounded — this preference of th« 
subject to all its outward and contingent modifi- 
cations — this preference of man viewed as the 
possessor of a heart, and of a spirit, and of 
capacities for truth and for righteousness, to man 
Eignalized by prosperity, and clothed in the pomp 
and in the circumstance of its visible glories — this 
is quite akin with the superiority which the Bible 
every where ascribes to the soul over the body, 
and to eternity over time, and to the Supreme 
Author of Being over ail that is subordinate and 
created. It marks a discernment, unclouded by 
all those associations which are so current and 
have so fatal an ascendancy in our world — the 
wisdom of a purer and more ethereal region than the 
one we occupy — the unpolluted clearness of a light 
shining in a dark place, which announces its own 
coming to be from above, and gives every spirit- 
ual reader of the Bible to perceive the beaming 
of a powerful and presiding intelligence in all its 
pages. 

One very animating inference to be drawn from 
our text, is how much may be made of humanity. 
Did a king come to take up his residence amongst 
us— did he shed a grandeur over our city by the 
presence of his court, and give the impulse of his 
expenditure to the trade of its population — it were 
not easy to rate the value and the magnitude which 
such an event would have on the estimation of a 
";ommon understanding, or the degree of personal 
importance which would attach to him, who stood 
a lofty object in the eye of admiring townsmen. 
And yet it is possible, out of the raw and ragged 



ADVANTAGES OF CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE. 25 

materials of an obscurest lane, to rear an individual 
of more inherent worth, than him who thus draws 
the gaze of the world upon his person. By the 
act of training in wisdom's ways the most tattered 
and neglected boy who runs upon our pavements, 
do we present the community with that which, in 
wisdom's estimation, is of greater price, than this 
gorgeous inhabitant of a palace. And when one 
thinks how such a process may be multiplied 
among the crowded families that are around us — 
when one thinks of the extent and the density of 
that mine of moral wealth, which retires, and 
deepens, and accumulates, behind each front of the 
street along which we are passing — when one tries 
to compute the quantity of spirit that is imbedded 
in the depth and the frequency of these human 
habitations, and reflects of this native ore, that 
more than the worth of a monarch may be stamped, 
by instruction, on each separate portion of it — a 
field is thus opened for the patriotism of those who 
want to give an augmented value to the produce of 
our land, which throws into insignificance all the 
enterprises of vulgar speculation. Commerce may 
flourish, or may fail — and amid the ruin of her 
many fluctuations, may elevate a few of the more 
fortunate of her sons to the afliuence of princes. 
Thy merchants may be princes, and thy trafiickers 
be the honourable of the earth. But if there be 
truth in our text, there may, on the very basis of 
human society, and by a silent process of education, 
materials be formed, which far outweigh in cost 
and true dignity, all the blazing pinnacles that 
glitter upon its summit — and it is indeed a cheer- 



252 ADVANTAGES OF CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE. 

ing thought to the heart of a philanthropist, thav 
near him Ues a territory so ample, on which he 
may expatiate — where for &,l\ his pains, and all hia 
sacrifices, he is sure of a repayment more sub- 
stantial, than was ever wafted by richly laden 
flotilla to our shores — where the return comes to 
him, not in that which superficially decks the man, 
but in a solid increment of value fixed and perpet- 
uated on the man himself — where additions to the 
worth of the soul form the proceeds of his produc- 
tive operation — and where, when he reckons up 
the profits of his enterprise, he finds them to con- 
sist of that, which, on the highest of all authorities, 
he is assured to be more than meat, of that which 
is greatly more than raiment. 

Even without looking beyond the confines of our 
present world, the virtue of humble life will bear 
to be advantageously contrasted with all the pride 
and glory of an elevated condition. The man who, 
though among the poorest of them all, has a wisdom 
and a weight of character, which makes him the 
oracle of his neighbourhood — the man, who, vested 
with no other authority than the meek authority of 
worth, carries in his presence a power to shame 
and to overawe the profligacy that is around him 
. — the venerable father, from whose lowly tenement 
the voice of psalms is heard to ascend with the 
offering up of every evening sacrifice — the Christian 
sage, who, exercised among life's severest hardships, 
looks calmly onward to heaven, and trains the foot- 
steps of his children in the way that leads to it — 
the eldest of a well-ordered family, bearing their 
duteous and honourable part in the contest with its 



ADVANTAGES OF CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE. 25S 

difficulties and its trials — all these offer to ouinotice 
such elements of moral respectability, as do exist 
among the lowest orders of human society, and 
elements, too, ^vhich admit of being multiplied far 
beyond th« reach of any present calculation. And 
while we hold nothing to be more unscriptural than 
the spirit of a factious discontent with the rulers 
of our land — while wo feel nothing to be more un- 
tastefulthan the insolence of a vulgar disdain towards 
men of rank, or men of opulence — yet should the 
king upon the throne be taught to understand, that 
there is a dignity of an intrinsically higher order than 
the dignity of birth or of power — a dignity which 
may be seen to sit with gracefulness on the meanest 
of his subjects — and which draws from the heart of 
the beholder a truer and profounder reverence. 

So that, were it for nothing more than to bless 
and adorn our present state, there cannot be an 
attempt of greater promise, than that of extending 
education among the throng of our peasantry — 
there cannot be a likelier way of filling the country 
with beauteous and exalted spectacles — there 
cannot be a readier method of pouring a glory over 
the face of our land, than that of spreading the 
wisdom of life, and the wisdom of principle, through- 
out the people who live in it — a glory differing iu 
kind, but greatly higher in degree, than the glories 
of common prosperity. It is well that the progress 
of knowledge is now looked to by politicians without 
alarm — that the ignorance of the poor is no longer 
regarded as more essential to the devotion of their 
patriotism, than it is to the devotion of their piety 
— that they have, at length, found that the best 



254 ADVANTAGES OF CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE. 

way of disarming the lower orders of all that is 
threatening and tumultuous, is not to enthral, but 
to enlighten them — that the progress of truth among 
them, instead of being viewed vrith dismay, is viewed 
with high anticipation — and an impression greatly 
more just, and greatly more generous, is now be- 
ginning to prevail, that the strongest rampart which 
Cc'.n possibly b.e thrown around the cause of public 
tranquillity, consists of a people raised by infor- 
mation, and graced by all moral and all Christian 
accomplishments. 

For our own part, we trust, that the mighty in- 
terval of separation between the higher and lower 
orders of our community, will, at length, be broken 
down, not by any inroad of popular violence — not by 
the fierce and devouring sweep of any revolutionary 
tempest — not even by any new adjustment, either 
of the limits of power, or the limits of property — not, 
in short, as the result of any buttle, fought either 
on the arena of war, or on the arena of politics — but 
as the fruit of that gradual equalization in mind 
•ind in manners, to which even now a sensible ap- 
proach is already making on the part of our arti- 
zans and our labourers. They are drawing to- 
wards an equality, and on that field, too, in which 
equality is greatly most honourable. And we fondly 
hope, that the time is coming, when, in frank and 
frequent intercourse, we shall behold the ready ex- 
change of confidence on the one side, and affection 
on tlie other — when the rich and the poor shall love 
each other more, just because they know each other 
more — when each party shall recognise the other 
to be vastly worthier of regard and of reverencie 



ADVANTAGES OF CHRISTIAN KNOWI,EDGE. 255 

than is now apprehended — when united by tho 
sympathies of a common hope, and a common 
nature, and on a perfect level in all that is essential 
and characteristic of humanity, they shall, at length, 
learn to live in love and peacefulness together, 
as the expectants of one common heaven — ^s the 
members of one common and rejoicing family. 

But, to attain a just estimate of the superiority 
of the poor man who has wisdom, over the rich 
man who has it not, we must enter into the 
calculation of eternity — we must look to wisdom in 
its true essence, as consisting of religion, as having 
the fear of God for its beginning, and the rule of 
God for its way, and the favour of God for its full 
and satisfying termination — we must compute how 
speedily it is, that, on the wings of time, the season 
of every paltry distinction between them must, at 
length, pass away ; how soon death will strip the 
one of his rags, and the other of his pageantry, and 
send them, in utter nakedness, to the dust ; how 
soon judgment will summon them from their graves, 
and place them in outward equality before the great 
disposer of their future lot, and their future place, 
through ages which never end ; how in that 
situation, the accidental distinctions of life will be 
rendered void, and personal distinctions will be all 
that shall avail them ; how, when examined by the 
secrets of the inner man, and the deeds done in their 
body, the treasure of heaven shall be adjudged only 
to him whose heart was set upon it in this world ; 
and how tremendously the account between them 
will ])e turned, when it shall be found of the one, 
that he must perish for lack of knowlrtdge, and cf' 



256 ADVANTAGES OF CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE. 

the Other, that he has the wisdom which is uut© 
salvation. 

And here it is of importance to remark, that to 
be wise as a Christian is wise, it is not essential to 
have that higher scholarship which wealth alone 
can purchase — that such is the peculiar adaptation 
of the Gospel to the poor, that it may be felt in 
the full force of its most powerful evidence, by the 
simplest of its hearers — that to be convinced of its 
truth, all which appears necessary is, to have a 
perception of sin through the medium of the 
conscience, and a perception of the suitableness of 
the offered Saviour through the medium of a 
revelation, plain in its terms, and obviously sincere 
and affectionate in its calls. Philosophy does not 
melt the conscience. Philosophy does not make 
luminous that whicii in itself is plain. Philosophy 
does not bring home, with greater impression upon 
the heart, the symptoms of honesty and good will, 
which abound in the New Testament. Prayer 
may do it. Moral earnestness may do it. The 
Spirit, given to those who ask Him, may shine 
with the light of His demonstration, on the docility 
of those little children, who are seeking, with their 
whole hearts, the way of peace, and long to have 
their feet established on the paths of righteousness. 
There is a learning, the sole fruit of which is a 
laborious deviation from the truth as it is in Jesus. 
And there is a learning which reaches no farther 
than to the words in which that truth is announced, 
and yet reaches far enough to have that truth 
brought home with power upon the understanding — 



NTAGES OF CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE. 251 

the Bible, and yet by which the scholar is conducted 
to that hidden wisdom, which is his light in life, 
and his passport to immortality — a learning, which 
hath simply l^d the inquirer's way to that place, 
where the Holy Ghost hath descended upon him 
in rich effusion, and which, as he was reading, in 
his own tongue, the wonderful words of God, hath 
given them such a weight and such a clearness in 
his eyes, that they have become to him the words 
whereby he shall be saved. And thus it is, that 
in many a cottage of our land, there is a wisdom 
which is reviled, or unknown, in many of our halls 
of literature — there is the candle of the Lord shin- 
ing in the hearts of those who fear Him — there is 
a secret revealed unto babes, which is hidden from 
the wise and the prudent — there is an eye which 
discerns, and a mind that is well exercised on the 
mysteries of the sure and the well-ordered covenant 
— there is a sense and a feeling of the preciousness 
of that cross, the doctrine of which is foolishness to 
those who perish — there is a ready apprehension 
of that truth, which is held at nought by many 
rich, and many mighty, and many noble, who will 
not be admonished — ^but which makes these poor 
to be rich in faith, and heirs of that kingdom which 
God hath prepared for those who love Him. 

We know not, if any who is now present, has 
ever felt the charm of an act of intercourse with a 
Christian among the poor — with one. whose chief 
attainment is, that he knows the Bible to be true 
— and that his heart, touched and visited by a 
consenting movement to its doctrine, feels it to be 
precious. We shall be disappointed, if the very 



258 ADVANTAGES OF CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE. 

exterior of such a man do not bear the impress of 
that worth and dignity which have been stamped 
upon his character — if, in the very aspect and 
economy of his household, the traces of his 
superiority are not to be found — if tiie promise, 
even of the hfe that now is, be not conspicuously 
realized on the decent sufficiency of his means, and 
the order of his well-conditioned family — if the eye 
of tasteful benevolence be not regaled by the 
symptoms of comfort and cheerfulness which are 
to be seen in his lowly habitation. And we shall 
be greatly disappointed, if after having survived 
the scoff of companions, and run through the ordeal 
of nature's enmity, he do not earn, as the fruits of 
the good confession that he witnesses among his 
neigiibours, the tribute of a warm and willing cor- 
diality from them all — if, while he lives, he do not 
stand the first in estimation, and when he dies, the 
tears and acknowledgments of acquaintances, as 
vveli as of kinsfolk, do not follow him to his grave 
- -it, even in the hearts of the most unholy around 
him. an unconscious testimony is not borne to the 
worth of holiness, so as to make even this world's 
honour one of the ingi-edients in the portion of the 
righteous. But these are the mere tokens and 
visil)le accompaniments of Christian excellence — 
liie passing eflflorescence of a growth that is open- 
ing and maturing for eternity. To behold this 
excellence in all its depth, and in all its solidity, you 
nuist examine his mind, and there see the vastly 
higher elements, with which it is convei-sant, than 
those among which the children of this world are 
j>roveUing — there see, how, in the hidden walk of 



ADVANTAGES OF CHRrSTTAN KNOWLEDGE. 259 

the inner man. he treaas a more elevated palh than 
is trodden either by the daughters of j-iaiety. or the 
sons of ambition — there see, how the whole great- 
ness and imagery of heaven are present to his 
thoughts, and what a reach and nobleness of 
conception have gathered upon his soul, by his 
daily approaches to heaven's sanctuary. He lives 
in a cottage — and yet he is a king and priest 
unto God. He is fixed for life to the ignoble 
drudgery of a workman, and yet he is on the full 
march to a blissful immortality. He is a child in 
the mysteries of science, but familiar with greater 
mysteries. That preaching of the cross, which is 
foolishness to others, he feels to be the power of 
God, and the wisdom of God. That faithfulness 
which annexes to all the promises of the Gospel 
— that righteousness which is unto the believer — 
that fulness in Christ, out of which the supplies of 
light and of strength are ever made to descend on 
the prayers of all who put their trust in Him — that 
wisdom of principle, and wisdom of application, 
by which, through his spiritual insight into his 
Bible, he is enabled both to keep his heart, and 
to guide the movements of his history, — these are 
his treasures — these are the elements of that moral 
wealth, by which he is far exalted above the 
monarch, who stalks his little hour of magnificence 
on earth, and then descends a ghost of departed 
greatness into the land of condemnation. He is 
rich, just because the word of Christ dwells in him 
richly in all iv"s('im. He in g"eat, because the 
Spirit of glory and of God rests upon him. 

So that, the same conclusion comes back upon 



260 ADVANTAGES OF CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE, 

US with mightier emphasis than before. If a pool 
child be capable of being thus transformed, how it 
shcAild move the heart of a city philanthropist, 
when he thinks of the amazing extent of raw mate- 
rial, for this moral and spiritual manufacture that 
is on every side of him — when he thinks, that in 
going forth on some Christian enterprise among a 
population, he is in truth, walking among the 
rudiments of a state that is to be everlasting — that 
out of their most loathsome and unseemly abodes, 
a glory can be extracted, which will weather all 
the storms, and all the vicissitudes of this world's 
history — that, in the filth and raggedness of a hovel, 
that is to be found, on which all the worth of 
heaven, as well as all the endurance of heaven can 
be imprinted — that he is, in a word, dealing in 
embryo with the elements of a great and future 
empire, which is to rise, indestructible and eternal, 
on the ruins of all that is earthly, and every member 
of which shall be a king and a priest for evermore. 
And before I pass on to the application of these 
remarks, let me just state, that the great instrument 
for thus elevating the poor, is that Gospel of Jesus 
Christ, which may be preached unto the poor. It 
is the doctrine of His cross finding an easier 
admission into their hearts, than it does through 
those barriers of human pride, and human resistance, 
which are often reared on the basis of literature. 
Let the testimony of God be simply taken in, that 
on His own Son he has laid the iniquities of ug ai. 
— and from this point does the humble scholar of 
Christianity pass into light, and enlargement, and 
progressive holiness. On the reception of this 



ADVANTAGES OF CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE. 26 . 

great truth, there hinges the emancipation of hia 
heart from a thraldom which represses all the 
spiritual energies of those who live without hope, 
and, therefore, live without God in the world. 
It is guilt — it is the sense of his awakened and 
unexpiated guilt, which keeps man at so wide a 
distance from the God whom he has offended. 
Could some method be devised, by which God, 
jealous of His honour, and man jealous of his 
safety, might be brought together on a firm ground 
of reconciliation — it would translate the sinner 
under a new moral influence, to the power of 
which, and the charm of which. He, before, was 
utterly impracticable. Jesus Christ died, the just 
for the unjust, to bring us unto God. This is a 
truth, which, when all the world shall receive it, 
all the woi'ld will be renovated. Many do not see 
how a principle, so mighty in operation, should be 
enveloped in a proposition so simple of utterance. 
But let a man, by his faith in this utterance, come 
to know that God is his friend, and that heaven is 
the home of his fondest expectation ; and in contact 
with such new elements as these, he will evince 
the reach, and the habit, and the desire of a new 
creature. It is this doctrine which is the alone 
instrument of God for the moral transformation of 
our species. When every demonstration from the 
chair of philosophy shall fail, this will achieve its 
miracles of light and virtue among the people — 
and however infidelity may now deride — or pro- 
taneness may now lift her appalling voice upon our 
strefcts — or licentiousness may now offer her sicken- 
ing spectacles—or moral worthlessness may have 



262 ADVANTAGES OF CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE, 

now deeply tainted the families of our outcast and 
long-neglected population, — however unequal may 
appear the contest with the powers and the principles 
of darkness — yet let not the teachers of righteousness 
abandon it in despair ; God will bring forth judg- 
ment unto victory, and on the triumphs of the 
word of his own testimony, will he usher in the 
glory of the latter days. 

There is one kind of institution that never has 
been set up in a country, without deceiving and 
degrading its people ; and another kind of institution 
that never has been set up in a country, without 
raising both the comfort and the character of its 
families. We leave it to the policy of our sister 
kingdom, by the pomp and the pretension of her 
charities, to disguise the wretchedness which she 
cannot do away. The glory of Scotland lies in 
her schools. Out of the abundance of her moral 
and literary wealth, that wealth which communica- 
tion cannot dissipate — that wealth which its possessor 
may spread and multiply among thousands, and yet 
be as affluent as ever — that wealth, which grows 
by competition, instead of being exhausted — thia 
is what, we trust, she will be ever ready to bestow 
on all her people. Silver and gold she may have 
none — but such as she has she will give — she will 
send them to school. She cannot make pensioners 
of them — but will, if they like, make scholars of 
them. She will give them of that food by which 
she nurses and sustains all her offspring — by which 
she renders wise the very poorest of her children — 
by which, if there be truth in our text, she puts 
into many a single cottager, a glory surpassing that 



ADVANTAGES OF CHIUSTIAN KNOWLEDGE. 2ud 

of the mightiest potentates in our world. To hold 
out any other boon, is to hold out a promise which 
she and no country in the universe, can ever reaUze 
— it is to decoy, and then most wretchedly to 
deceive — it is to put on a front of invitation, by 
which numbers are allured to hunger, and naked- 
ness, and contempt. It is to spread a table, and 
to hang out such signals of hospitality, as draw 
around it a multitude expecting to be fed, and who 
find that they must famish over a scanty entertain- 
ment. A system replete with practical mischief, 
can put on the semblance of charity, even as Satan, 
the father of all lying and deceitful promises, can 
put on the semblance of an angel of light. But 
v/e trust, that the country in which we live will 
ever be preserved from the cruelty of its tender 
mercies — that she will keep by her schools, and her 
Scriptures, and her moralizing process ; and that, 
instead of vainly attempting so to force the exube- 
rance of Nature, as to meet and satisfy the demands 
of a population, whom she has led astray, she will 
make it her constant aim so to exalt her population, 
as to establish every interest that belongs to them, 
on the foundation of their own worth and their own 
capabilities — that taunted, as she has been, by her 
contemptuous neighbour, for the poverty of her 
soil, she will at least prove, by deed and by 
example, that it is fitted to sustain an erect, and 
honourable, and high-minded peasantry ; and 
leaving England to enjoy the fatness of her own 
fields, and a complacency with her own institutions, 
that we shall make a clean escape from her error, 
and never ao;ain be entangled therein — that unse^ 



264 ADVANTAGES OF CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE. 

duced by the false lights of a mistaken philanthropy, 
and mistaken patriotism, we shall be enabled to 
hold on in the way of our ancestors ; to ward ofl 
every near and threatening blight from the character 
of our beloved people ; and so to labour with the 
manhood of the present, and the boyhood of the 
coming generation, as to enrich our land with that 
wisdom which is more precious than gold, and that 
righteousness which exalteth a kingdom. 



ON CHRISTIANIZING OUR POPULATION. 265 



DISCOURSE XIL 

ON THE DUTY AND THE MEANS OF CHRIS- 
TIANIZING. OUR HOME POPULATION. 



" And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach 
the Gospel to every creature." — Mark xvi. 15. 

Christianity proceeds upon the native indisposi- 
tion of the human heart to its truths and its lessons 
— and all its attempts for the establishment of itself 
in the world are made upon this principle. It 
never expects that men will, of their own accord, 
originate that movement by which they are to 
come in contact with the faith of the Gospel — and, 
therefore, instead of waiting till they shall move 
towards the Gospel, it has been provided, from the 
first, that the Gospel shall move towards them. 
The Apostles did not set up their stationary college 
at Jerusalem, in the hope of embassies from a 
distance to inquire after the recent and wondrous 
revelation that had broke upon the world. But 
they had to go forth, and to preach among all 
nations, beginning at Jerusalem. And, in like 
manner, it never was looked for, that men, in the 
ardour of their curiosity, or desire after the way of 
salvation, were to learn the language of the Apostles, 
that they might come and hear of it at their mouth. 
But the Apostles were miraculously gifted with the 
power of addressing all in their own native language 
— and when thus furnished, they went actively and 
aggressively about among them. It is no where 

VOL. VI. M 



266 ON THE DUTY OF CHRISTIANIZING 

supposed that the demand for ChristiauUy is 
spontaneously, and in the first instance, to arise 
among those who are not Christians ; but it is laid 
upon those who are Christians, to go abroad, and, 
if possible, to awaken out of their spiritual lethargy, 
those who are fast asleep in that worldliness, which 
they love, and from which, without some external 
application, there is no rational prospect of ever 
arousing them. The dead mass will not quicken 
into sensibility of itself — and, therefore, unless 
some cause of fermentation be brought to it from 
without, will it remain in all the sluggishness of its 
original nature. For there is an utter diversity 
between the article of Christian instruction, and 
the articles of ordinary merchandise. For the 
lat<:er there is a demand, to which men are natively 
and originally urged by hunger or by thirst, or by 
the other physical sensations and appetites of their 
constitution. For the former there is no natural 
appetite. It is just as necessary to create a 
spiritual hunger, as it is to aiford a spiritual 
refreshment — and so from the very first, do we find, 
that for the spread of Christianity in the world, 
there had to be not an itinerancy on the part of 
inquirers, but a busy, active, and extended itinerancy 
on the part of its advocates and its friends. 

Now, those very principles which were so obvi- 
ously acted on at the beginning, are also the very 
principles that, in all ages of the church, have 
characterized its evangelizing processes. The 
Bible Society is now doing, by ordinary means, 
what was done by the miracle of tongues, in the 
days of the Apoatles — enabling the peopJe of all 



OUR HOME POPULATION. 26* 

nations to read each in their own tongue, the 
wonderful works of God. And the Missionary 
Societies are sending forth, not inspired Apostles, 
gifted with tongues ; but the expounders of apos- 
tolical doctrine, learned in tongues, over the face 
of the globe. They do not presume upon such a 
taste for the gospel in heathen lands, as that the 
people there shall traverse seas and continents, 
or shall set themselves down to the laborious 
acquisition of some Christian language, that they 
might either have access to Scripture, or the ability 
of converse with men that are skilled in the mysteries 
of the faith. But this taste which they do not 
find, they expect to create — and for this purpose, 
is there now an incessant application to Pagan 
countries, of means and instruments from without 
— and many are the lengthened and the hazardous 
journeys which have been undertaken — and voyages 
of splendid enterprise have recently been crowned 
with splendid moral achievements ; insomuch, that 
even the ferocity and licentiousness of the savage 
character have given way under the power of the 
truth ; and lands, that within the remembrance of 
many now alive, rankled with the worst abominations 
of idolatry, have now exchanged them for the arts 
and the decencies of civilization; for village schools, 
and Christian Sabbaths, and venerable pastors, 
who first went forth as missionaries, and, as the 
fruits of their apostolic labour, among these out- 
cast wanderers, can now rejoice over holy grandsires, 
and duteous children, and all that can gladden the 
philanthropic eye, in the peace, and purity, and 
comfort of pious families. 



2G8 ON THE DUTY OF CHRISTIANIZING 

Now. amid the splendour and the interest of 
these more conspicuous operations, it is often not 
adverted to, how much work of a missionai-y 
character is indispensable for perpetuating, and 
still more for extending Christianity at home- 
how families, within the distance of balf-a-mile, 
may lapse, without observation or sympathy on 
our part, into a state of practical heathenism — how, 
Mithin less tiian an hour's walk, hundreds may be 
found, who morally and spiritually live at as wide 
a separation from the Gospel, and a)] its ordinances, 
as do the barbarians of another continent — how, in 
many of our crowded recesses, the families, which, 
out of sight, and out of Christian sympathy, have 
accumulated there, might, at length, sink and 
settle down into a listless, and lethargic, and, to all 
appearance, impracticable population — leaving the 
Christian teacher as much to do with them, as has 
the first missionary when he touches on a yet 
unbroken shore. It is vain to expect, that by a 
proper and primary impulse originating with them- 
selves, those aliens from Christianity will go forth 
on the inquiry after it. The messengers of Chris- 
tianity must go forth upon them. Many must g^) 
to and fro amongst the streets, and the lanes, and 
those deep intricacies, that teem with human life, 
to an extent far beyond the eye or imagination of 
the unobservant passenger, if we are to look for 
the increase either of a spiritual taste, or of scrip- 
tural knowledge among the families. That nass 
which is so dense of mind, and, therefore, so dense 
of immortality, must be penetrated in the length 
and in the breadth of it ; and then many will l?e 



OUR HOME POPULATION. liQQ 

found, who, however small their physical distance 
from the sound of the Gospel, stand at as wide a 
moral distance therefrom, as do the children of the 
desert — and to overpass this barrier, to send out 
upon this outfield, such ministrations as might 
reclaim its occupiers to the habits and the obser- 
vations of a Christian land, to urge and obtrude, 
as it were, upon the notice of thousands, what, 
without such an advancement, not one of them 
might have moved a footstep in quest of — these are 
so many approximations, that, to all intents and 
purposes, have in them the character ; and might, 
with the blessing of God, have also the effect of a 
missionary enterprise. 

When we are commanded to go into all the 
world, and preach the Gospel to every creature, 
our imagination stretches forth beyond the limits of 
Christendom ; and we advert not to the millions 
who are within these limits, nay, within the sight 
of Christian temples, and the sound of Sabbath 
bells, yet who never heard the Gospel of Jesus 
Christ. They live to manhood, and to old age, 
deplorably ignorant of the way of salvation ; and 
in ignorance, too, not the less deplorable that it is 
wilful. It is this which so fearfully aggravates 
their guilt, that, on the very confines of light, they 
remain in darkness ; and thereby prove, that it is 
a darkness which they love, and which they choose 
to persist in. Thus it will be found more tolerable 
for the heathen abroad, than for the heathen at 
home — and therefore it is, that for the duty of 
our text, the wilds of Pagan idolatry, or of Maho- 
metan del ision, are not the only theatres — that for 



270 ON THE DUTY OF CHRISTIANIZING 

its full performance, it is not enongli that we equip 
the missionary vessel, and go in quest of untaught 
humanity at a distance, and hold converse with the 
men of other climes, and of other tongues, and rear 
on some barbarous shore, the Christianized village, 
as an outpost in that spiritual warfare, by which 
we hope, at length, to banish depravity and guilt, 
even from the farthest extremities of our species. 
These are noble efforts, and altogether worthy of 
being extended and multiplied a hundred fold. 
But they are not the only efforts of Christian 
philanthropy — nor can they be sustained as a com- 
plete discharge from the obligation of preaching 
the Gospel to every creature under heaven. For 
the accomplishment of this, there must not only be 
a going forth un the vast and untrodden spaces 
that are without; there must be a filling up of the 
numerous and peopled vacancies that are within— 
a busy, internal locomotion, that might circulate, 
and disperse, and branch off to the right and to the 
left, among the many thousand families which are 
at hand: And thoroughly to pervade these families; 
to make good a lodgment in the midst of them, for 
the nearer or the more frequent ministrations of 
Christianity than before ; to have gained welcome 
for tlie Gospel testimony into their houses, and, 
in return, to have drawn any of them forth to 
attendance on the place of Sabbath and of solemn 
services — this, also, is to act upon our text, this 
is to do the part, and to render one of the best 
achievements of a missionary. 

*' How can they believe," says Paul, " without 



OUR HOME POPULATION. 27 1 

they be sent?" To make sure this process, there 
must be a juxtaposition between him who declares 
the word, and them who are addressed b}' it — but 
to make good this juxtaposition, the Apostle never 
imagines that alienated man is, of his own accord, 
to move towards the preacher — and, therefore, 
that the preacher must be sent, or must more 
towards him. And, perhaps, it has not been 
adverted to, that in the very first steps of this 
approximation, there is an encouragement for 
going onward, and for plying the families of a city 
population with still nearer and more besetting 
urgencies than before. It is not known how 
much the very juxtaposition of an edifice for wor- 
ship, tells upon the church-going habit of the 
contiguous householders — how many there are 
who will not move at the sound of a distant bell, 
that with almost mechanical sureness, will go forth, 
and mingle with the stream of passengers, who 
are crowding the way to a place that is at hand — 
how children, lured, perhaps, at the first, by curio- 
sity, are led so to reiterate their attendance, as to 
be landed in a most precious habit for youth and 
for manhood — how this tendency spreads by talk, 
and sympathy, and imitation, through each little 
vicinity ; and thus, in groups, or in clusters, might 
adjoining families be gauied over to the ordinances 
of religion — how the leaven, when once set a-goiog, 
might spread by the fermentation of converse, and 
mutual sentiment, through the whole lump ; till 
over the face of a whole city department, the 
Christian fabric, v/hich stands conspicuously in the 
midst of it, and whither its people are rung everj 



272 ON THE DUTY OF CHRISTIANIZING 

Sabbath, to the ministrations of the Gospel, might 
come to be its place of general repair; and attend- 
ance there be at length proceeded on as one of the 
decencies of its established observation. Some of 
the influences in this process may appear slight or 
fanciful to the superficial eye — and yet they are 
known, and familiarly known, to be of powerful 
operation. You must surely be aware, that it 
makes all the practical difference in the world, to 
the retail and custom even of an ordinary shop, 
should it deviate, by a very small hairbreadth, 
from the minutest convenience of the public — 
should it retire, by ever so little from the busy 
pavement, or have to be ascended by two or three 
steps, or require the slightest turn and change of 
direction from that beaten path which passengers 
do inveterately walk in. And human nature on a 
week-day, is human nature on the Sabbath. There 
is no saying on how slight or trivial a circumstance 
it may be made to turn — and odd as the illustration 
may appear, we feel confident that we have not, at 
present, either a profound or a pious hearer, who 
will undervalue one single stepping-stone, by which 
a hearer more might be brought to the house of God 
— who will despise any of the means, however 
humble, that bring a human creature within the 
reach of that word, which is able to sanctify and 
save him — who will forget the wonted style of 
God's administrations, by which, on these minutest 
incidents of life, the greatest events of history are 
oft suspended — or, who will deny that the same 
Being, who, by the flight of a single bird, turned 
the pursuers of Mahomet away from him, and so 



OUR HOME POPULATION. STi 

spared the instrument by which a gross and griev- 
ous superstition hath found an ascendancy over 
rniliions of immortal spirits, that He can enUst in the 
cause of His own Son, even the least and slightest 
familiarities of human practice ; and with links, 
which in themselves are exceeding small, can 
fasten and uphold the chain, which runs through 
the earthly pilgrimage of man, and reaches to hia 
eternity. 

But after all, though local conveniency may 
allure, in the first instance, to the house of God, 
local conveniency will not detain the attendance 
of multitudes, unless there be a worth and a power 
in the services which are rendered there — unless 
there be a moral earnestness in the heart of the 
preacher, which may pour forth a sympathy with 
itself through the hearts of a listening congregation 
— unless, acquitting himself as an upright minister 
of the New Testament, he expound with faithful- 
ness, and some degree of energy, those truths which 
are unto salvation ; and so distribute among his 
fellow-sinners, the alone substantial and satisfying 
food of the soul — unless such a demonstration be 
given of the awful realities in which we deal, as to 
awaken in many bosoms the realizing sense of 
death, and of the judgment- seat — and, above all, 
unless the demands of the law, with its accom- 
panying severities and terrors, be so urged on the 
conviction of guilty man, as to make it fall with 
welcome upon his ear, when told, that unto him a 
Saviour has been born. These are the alone 
elements of a rightful and well-earned popularity. 
Eloquence may dazzle — and argument may compel 
M 2 



274 ON THE DUTY OF CHRISTIANIZING 

the homage of its intellectual admirers — and fashion 
may even, when these are wanting, sustain through 
its little hour of smile and of sunshine, a complacent 
attendance on the reigning idol of the neighbour- 
hood — but it is only if armed with the panoply of 
scriptural truth, that there will gather and adhere 
to him a people who hunger for the bread of life, 
and who make a business of their eternity. To 
fill the church well, we must fill the pulpit well ; 
and see that the articles of the peace-speaking 
blood, and the sanctifying Spirit, are the topics 
that be dearest to the audience, and on which the 
Christian orator who addresses them most loves 
to expatiate. These form the only enduring staple 
of good and vigorous preaching ; and unless they 
have a breadth, and a prominency, and a fond 
reiteration in the sermons that shall be delivered 
from the place where we now stand,* they either 
will not, or ought not to be hstened to. 

Yet grieved and disappointed should we be, did 
he confine himself to Sabbath ministrations — did 
he not go forth, and become the friend and the 
Christian adviser of all who dwell within the limits of 
his vineyard — did he not act the part of an Apostle 
among you, from house to house, and vary the 
fatigue of his preparations for the pulpit, by a daily 
walk amongst the ignorant, or the sick, or the sorrow- 
ful, or the dying. It is your part to respect, as you 
would a sanctuary, that solitude to which, for hours 
together, he should commit himself, in the work of 

" This Sermon was preached at the opening of a city chapel, 
which has a local district assigned to it, aud whose riue of seat* 
Utting is on the teniVorial principle. 



I 



OUR HOME POPULATION. 275 

meditating the truths of salvation — and it is his 
part to return your delicacy by his labours of love, 
by the greetings of his cordial fellowship, by his 
visits of kindness. It is a wrong imagination on 
the side of a people, w^heu they look on the Sabbath 
for a vigorous exposition of duty or doctrine, from 
him whom they teaze, and interrupt, and annoy, 
through the week — and it is a wrong imagination 
on the side of a pastor, when looking on the church 
as the sole arena of his usefulness, he does not 
relax the labour of a spirit that has been much 
exercised on the great topics of the Christian 
ministry, by frequent and familiar intercourse 
among those, whom, perhaps, he has touched or 
arrested by his Sabbath demonstrations. You 
ought to intrude not upon his arrangements and 
his studies ; but he ought, in these arrangements, 
to provide the opportunities of ample converse with 
every spiritual patient, with every honest inquirer. 
You should be aware of the distinction that he 
makes between that season of the day which is set 
apart for retirement, and that season of the day 
which lies open to the duty of holding courteous 
fellowship with all — and of hiding not himself from 
his own flesh. It is the gross insensibility which 
obtains to the privileges both of a sacred and 
literary order — it is the disturbance of a perpetual 
inroad on that prophet's chamber, which ought, at 
all times, to be a safe retreat of contemplation — it 
is the incessant struggle that must be made for a 
professional existence, with irksome applicaVion, 
and idle ceremony, and even the urgencies of 
friendship — these are sufficient to explain thosa 



276 ON THE DUTY OF CHRISTIANIZING 

pulpit imbecillities, of which many are heard t« 
complain, while themselves they help to create 
them. And, therefore, if you want to foster the 
energies of your future clergyman ; if you would 
co-operate with him in those mental labours, by 
which he provides through the week for the repast 
of your Sabbath festival ; if it is your desire that 
an unction and a power shall be felt in all his pulpit 
ministrations ; if here you would like to catch a 
glow of heaven's sacredness, and receive that fresh 
and forcible impulse upon your spirits, which 
might send you forth again with a redoubled ardour 
of holy affection and zeal on the business of life, 
and make you look and long for the coming Sabbath, 
as another delightful resting-place on your journey 
towards Zion — then suffer him to breathe, without 
molestation, in that pure and lofty region, where 
he might inhale a seraphic fervency, by which to 
kindle among his hearers his own celestial fire, 
his own noble enthusiasm. If it be this, and not 
the glee of companionship, or the drudgeries of 
ordinary clerkship that you want from your minister, 
then leave, I beseech you, his time in his own hand, 
and hold his asylum to be unviolable. 

But, we trust, that from this asylum his ex- 
cursions will be frequent— and sure we are, that 
nought but an affectionate forthgoing is necessary 
on his part, that he may have a warm and a willm^ 
reception upon yours. It is utterly a mistake, that 
any population, whatever be their present habits, 
will discourage the approaches of a Christian 
minister to their families. It is a particularly 
wrong imagination, that in cities there is a hard or 



OUR HOME POPULATION. 27T 

an iniinlent defiance among the labouring classes, 
which no assiduities of service or of good-will on 
t!ie part of their clergyman can possibly overcome. 
Let him but try what their temperament is in this 
matter, and he will find it in every way as courteoui 
and inviting, as among the most primitive of our 
Scottish peasantry. Let him be but alert to every 
call of threatening disease among his people, and 
the ready attendant upon every death-bed — let 
him ply not his fatiguing, but his easy and most 
practicable rounds of visitation in the midst of 
them — let him be zealous for their best interests, 
and not in the spirit of a fawning obsequiousness, 
but in that of a manly, intelligent, and honest 
friendship, let him stand forth as the guardian of 
the poor, the guide and the counsellor of their 
children ; it is positively not in human nature to 
withstand the charm and the power which lie in 
such unwearied ministrations — and if visibly 
prompted by the affinity that there is in the man's 
heart for his fellows of the species, there will, by a 
law of the human constitution, be an affinity in 
theirs towards him, which they cannot stifle, though 
they would ; and they will have no wish to stifle it. 
It is to this pi-inciple, little as it has been re- 
cognised, and still less as it has been proceeded 
on, it is to this that we confide the gathering at 
length of a congregation within these walls, and 
that too from the vicinities by which we are inj- 
mediately surrounded. That the chapel will be 
filled at the very outset, from the district which 
has been assigned to it, we have no expectation. 
But we do fondly hope, as the fruit of his un- 



27B ON THE DUTY OF CHRISTIANrZlNG 

wearied services, that its minister will draw the 
kii'.d regards of the people after him ; that an 
impression will be made by his powerful and 
reiterated addresses in the bosom of their faniili«fi, 
which may not stop there ; that the man who prays 
at every funeral, and sits by every dying bed, and 
seizes every opening for Christian usefulness that 
is afforded to him by the visitations of Providence 
on the houses of the surrounding neighbourhood, 
and who, while a fit companion for the great in 
bis vineyard, is a ready, and ever accessible friend 
to the poorest of them all — it is utterly impossible, 
that such a man, after his work of varied and 
active benevolence, will have nought to address on 
the Sabbath but empty walls. After being the 
eye-witness of what he does, there will spring up 
a most natural desire, and that cannot be resisted, 
to hear what he says. It is not yet known how 
much such attentions as tliese, kept up, and made 
to play in busy and constant recurrence upon one 
local neighbourhood — it is not yet known how 
much and how powerfully they tell in drawing the 
hearts of the people towards him who faithfully 
and with honest friendship, discharges them. They 
will make the pulpit which he fills a common centre 
of attraction to the whole territory over which he 
expatiates — and we need not that we may see 
exemplified in human society, the worth and im- 
portance of the pastoral relationship, we need not 
go alone among the sequestered vales, or the far 
and upland retreats of our country parishes. It 
is not a local phenomenon dependent on geography. 
It is a geneial one, dependent on the nature of 



OUR HOME POPULATION. 279 

man ; on those laws of the heart, which no change 
01 place or of circumstances can obliterate. To 
gain the moral ascendancy of which we speak, it 
is enough if the upright and laborious clergyman 
have human feelings and human famihes on every 
side of him. It signifies not where. Give him 
Christian kindness, and this will pioneer a way 
for him amongst all the varieties of place and of 
population. Besides the smoke, and the din, and 
the dizzying wheel of crowded manufactories, wUl he 
find as ready an introduction for himself and for 
his ofiice, as if his only walk had been among 
peaceful hamlets, and with nought but the romance 
and the rusticity of nature spread out before him. 
It is utterly a wrong imagination, and in the face 
both of experience and of prophecy, that in towns 
there is an impracticable barrier against the 
capabilities and the triumphs of the Gospel — that 
in towns the cause of human amelioration must be 
abandoned in despair — that in towns it is not by 
the architecture of chapels, but by the architecture 
of prisons, and of barracks, and of bridewells, we 
are alone to seek for the protection of society — 
that elsewhere a moralizing charm may go forth 
among the people, from village schools and sabbath 
services, but that there is a hardihood and a 
ferocity in towns, which must be dealt with in 
another way, and against which all the artillery of 
the pulpit is feeble as infancy — that a foul and a 
feverish depravity has settled there, which no 
spiritual application will ever extinguish : For 
amid all the devisings for the peace and order of 
our communitv, do we find it to be the shrewd and 



S80 ON THE DUTY OF CHRISTIANIZING 

sturdy apprehension of many, that all which can 
be achieved in our overgrown cities, is by the 
strength of the secular arm ; that a stern and 
vigorous police will do more for public morals, than 
a whole band of ecclesiastics ; that a periodical 
execution will strike a more salutary terror into 
the hearts of the multitude, than do the dreadest 
fulminations of the preacher's voice — and this will 
explain the derision and the distrust wherewith 
that argument is listened to, which goes to set 
forth the efiBcacy of Christian doctrine, or to magnify 
the office of him who delivers it. 

We can offer no computation that will satisfy 
such antagonists as these, of the importance of 
Christianity even to the civil and the temporal 
well-being of our species ; and we shall, therefore, 
plead the authority of our text, for extending its 
lessons to every creature — for going forth with it 
to every haunt and every habitation where immortal 
beings are to be found — for not merely carrying it 
beyond the limits of Christendom, but for filling up 
\\ith instruction the many blank, and vacant, and 
still unoccupied places, teeming with population, 
that, even within these limits have not been over- 
taken. What ! shall we be told, that if there is a 
man under heaven, whom the Gospel has not yet 
reached, it is but obedience to a last and solemn 
commandment, when the missionary travels even 
to the farthest verge of our horizon, that he may 
bear it to his door — and shall we be told of the 
thousands who are beside us, that, though their 
souls are perishing for lack of knowledge, we might, 
without one care or one effort abandon them ? Are 



OUR HOME POPULATION. 281 

we to ^ive up as desperate, the Christian reforma 
tion of our land, when we read of those mighty 
achievements, and those heavenly outpourings, by 
which even the veriest wilds of heathenism have 
been fertilized — or, with such an instrument to 
work by as that of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, 
which in the hands of the Spirit of God hath 
wrought its miracles on the men of all ages, shall we 
forbear, as a hopeless enterprise, the evangehzing 
of our own homes, the eternal salvation of our own 
families ? " Be of good cheer," says the Spirit to 
the Apostle, " I have much people for thee in this 
city ; and that, a city, too, the most profligate and 
abandoned that ever flourished on the face of our 
world. And still the Lord's hand is not shortened, 
that it cannot save. Neither is His ear heavy, 
that it cannot hear. It is open as ever to the cry 
of your intercessions — and on these, we would 
devolve our cause. We entreat the fellowship of 
your prayers. We know, that all human exertion, 
and eloquence, and wisdom, are vain, without them 
— that, lacking that influence which is gotten down 
by supplications from on high, sermons are but 
high-sounding cymbals, and churches but naked 
architecture — that mere pains are of no avail, and 
that it only lies within the compass of pains and of 
prayers, to do any thing. 

And we, indeed, have great reason for encourage- 
ment, when we think of the subject of our message. 
When we are bidden in the text to preach, it is to 
preach the Gospel — it is to proclaim good news 
in the hearing of the people — it is to sound forth 
what surely must be felt welcome by many- -it i« 



282 ON THE DUTY OF CHRISTIANIZING 

to sound forth the glad tidmgs of great joy — it is 
to tell even the chief of sinners, that God is now 
willing to treat him as a sinner no longer ; that 
He invites him to all the honours of righteousness; 
and that in virtue of a blood which cleanseth from 
all sin. and of an obedience, to the rewards of 
which he is freely and fully invited, there is not a 
guilty creature in our world, who may not draw 
nigh. Should he who preaches within these walls, 
turn out the faithful and the energetic expounder 
of this word of salvation — should the blessing of 
God be upon his ways, and that demonstration 
which Cometh from on high, accompany his words 
. — should he, filled with zeal in the high cause of 
your immortality, be i.nstant among you in season, 
and out of season — and devoted to the work of his 
sacred ministry, he make it his single aim to gather 
in a harvest of unperishable spirits, that by him as 
an instrument of grace, have been rescued from 
hell, and raised to a blissful eternity — should this 
be indeed the high walk of his unremitting toil, and 
his unwearied perseverance — then, such is the 
power of the divine testimony, when urged out of 
the fulness of a believer's heart, and made to fall 
with the impression of his undoubted sincerity on 
•those whom he addresses ; that for ourselves we 
shall have no fear of a good and a glorious issue to 
this undertaking — and, therefore, as Paul often 
cast the success of his labours on the prayers of 
them for whom he laboured, would I again entreat 
that your supplications do ascend to the throne of 
grace for him who is to minister amongst you in 
word and in doctrine — that he may, indeed, be a 



OUK HOME POPULATION. 283 

pastor according to God's own heart, who shall 
feed a people here with knowledge and with spir- 
itual understanding — that the travail of his soul 
may be blest to the conversion of many sons and 
daughters unto righteousness — that he may prove 
a comfort to all your hearts, and a great public 
benefit to all your families. 



284 ON THE HONOUR DUE TO ALL MEH. 

DISCOUKSE XIII. 

ON THE HONOUR DUE TO ALL MEN. 
" Honour all men. Honour the king." — 1 Pkteb ii. 17 

To lionourall men is alike the lesson of Philosophy 
and Eeligion. He who studies Humanity, not 
according to its accidental distinctions in society, 
but in its great and general characteristics — he 
who looks to its moral nature as a piece of curious 
and interesting mechanism, all whose processes 
are as accurately exemplified in the mind of the 
poorest individual, as the laws or the constructions 
of anatomy are in his body — he whose office it is 
to contemplate the fabric of its principles and 
powers, and who can recognise even in humble life 
the goodliest specimens of both — with him the 
distinctions of rank are apt to be lost and for- 
gotten, in the homage which he renders to man, 
simply as tne possessor of a constitution that has 
60 often exercised and regaled his faculties as an 
object of liberal curiosity. The liomeliest peasant 
bears within the confines of his inner man, that 
very tablet on the lines and characters of which the 
highest philosopher may for years perhaps have 
been most intensely gazing. All the^ secrets of 
.our wondrous economy are deposited there ; and, 
in the heart even of the most unlettered man, the 
memorj^ and the understanding and the imagina- 
tion and the conscience and every other function 



ON THE HONOUE DUE TO ALL MEN. 285 

and property of the yet inaccessible soul are nil 
in busy operation. To the owner of such an un- 
explored microcosm, we attach somewhat of the 
same reverence which we entertain for some pro- 
found and hidden mystery — and he who has la- 
boured most anxiously to seize upon the myste- 
ries of our nature, and therefore feels most pro- 
foundly how deep and how inscrutable they are, 
he perhaps is the most predisposed by his pur- 
suits and his habits to "honour all men.'.' 

Somewhat of the same sentiment is impressed 
upon us in the midst of a crowd — or as we pass 
along that street which is alive from morning to 
night with its endless flow of passengers. "We are 
aware of no contemplation that is more fitted to 
annihilate in one's own mind the importance of 
self ; or rather to multiply this feeling, and make 
it be transferred by us to each individual of that 
restless and eager population by whom we are 
surrounded. To think of each having within the 
precincts of his own bosom, a chamber of thoughts 
and purposes and fond imaginations as warm and 
teeming as our own, and of the busy history that 
is going on there ; that every one of the immense 
multitude is the centre of his own distinct amphi- 
theatre, which, however unknown to us, is the uni- 
verse to him ; that each meditative countenance 
of the vast and interminable number bespeaks a 
play of hopes and wishes and interests within, in 
every way as active, and felt to be of as great 
magnitude and urgency, as we experience in our- 
selves — further to think that should my own heart 
cease its palpitations, and were the light of my owa 



286 ON THE HONOUR DUE TO ALL MEN. 

wakeful spirit to be extinguished for ever, that 
still there would be a world as full of life and 
intelligence as before ; to think of myself as an 
unnaissed or unnoticed thing among the myriads 
who are around me, or rather to think that with 
each of these myriads there are desires as vivid, 
and sensibilities as deep, and cares as engrossing, 
and social or family affections as tender, as those 
which I carry about with me in that little world to 
which no one eye hath access but the eye of my 
own consciousness — there is a humility that ought 
to be impressed by such a contemplation ; or, if it 
do not utterly abase the reckoning that we have 
of ourselves, it ought at least to exalt our reckoning 
of all other men, and teach us to hold in honour 
those, who in the workings of the same nature and 
fellowship of the very same interests so thoroughly 
partake with us. 

It is true, that, in what may be called the 
outward magnitude of these interests, there is a 
wide distance between a sovereign and his subject 
— between the cares of an empire, and the cares 
of a small household economy. That is, the 
empire externally speaking is greater than the 
household — while inwardly the cares, the cogitations, 
the sensibilities of the heart, whether oppressive 
or joyful, may be altogether the same. They be 
a different set of objects, wherewith the monarch 
is conversant, and that keep in play the system oi 
his thoughts and emotions, just as it is upon a 
different sort of food that his blood circulates or that 
his physical system is upholden. Bjt as the 
peasant is like to him in respect of anatomy, so^ 



ON THE HON0l;lt DUE TO ALL MEN. 28" 

with all the diversity of circumstances, he is sub- 
stantially like to him, in the frame and mechanism 
of his spirit. The outward causes by which each 
is excited are vastly different ; but the inward ex- 
citement of both is the same — and, could we explore 
the little world that is in each of the two bosoms, 
we should recognise in each the same busy rotation 
of hopes and fears and wishes and anxieties. If 
it be indeed a just calculation, that there is a 
superiority, a surpassing worth in the moral which 
far outweighs the material, then, let the cottage 
be as widely dissimilar from the palace as it may, 
there is a similarity between their inhabitants, not 
in that which is minute, but in that which is 
momentous — and our weightiest arguments for 
honouring the king bear with efficacy upon the 
lesson, to honour all men. 

And moreover, let us but rate the importance 
of one thinking and living spirit, when compared 
with all the mute and unconscious materialism 
which is in our universe. Without such a spirit, 
the whole of visible existence were but an idle 
waste — a nothingness — for what is beauty were 
there no eye to look upon it, and what is music 
were there no ear to listen, and what is matter 
in all its rich and wondrous varieties without a 
spectator mind to be regaled by the contemplation 
of them ? One might conceive the very panorama 
that now surrounds us — the same earth and sea and 
skies that we now look upon — the same graces on 
the face of terrestrial nature, the same rolling 
wonders in tiie hrmamenc — yet without one spark 
Of thought or animation throughout tne unpeopled 



2»8 ON THE HONOUR DUE TO ALL MEN. 

amplitude. This in efir?ct were nonentity. To 
put out all tho consciousness that is in nature were 
tantamount to the annihilation of nature ; and the 
lighting up again of but one mind in the midst of 
this desolation, would of itself restore significancy 
to the scene, and be more than equivalent to tb**, 
first creation of it. In other words, one living 
mind is of more worth than a dead universe — or 
there is that in every single peasant to which I 
owe sublimer homage, than, if untenanted of mind, 
I should yield to all the wealth of this lower world, 
to all those worlds that roll in spaciousness and in 
splendour through the vastnesses of astronomy. 

Our Saviour Himself hath instituted the com- . 
parison between a world and a soul — and, whether 
both were alike perishable or alike enduring. His 
estimate of the soul's superiority would hold. He 
founds his computation on our brief tenure of all 
that is earthly, and on the magnitude of those 
abiding interests which wait the immortal spirit 
in other scenes of existence. All men are im- 
mortal. There is a grandeur of destination here, 
that far outweighs all the pride and pretension of 
this world's grandeur. Those lordly honours 
which some men fetch from the antiquity of their 
race are but poor indeed, when compared with 
that more signal honour which all men have in the 
eternity of their duration, [urespoctof immortality, 
the great and the small ones of the earth stand on an 
equal eminence — and in respect of the death which 
comes before it, both have to sink to the same 
humihating level. 'Ihe prince shares with th*? 
peasant m tbe horroi- and loathsomeness or death 



ON TMK HONOUR DIIF TO AU MEN. 289 

~-the peasant shares with the prince in the iA^h 
distinction of immortality. It is because in rhe 
poorest man's bosom, there resides an undying 
principle — it is because of that endless futurity 
which is before him, and in the progress of which 
all the splendours and obscurations of our present 
state will be speedily forgotten — it is because, 
though of yesterday, the bliss and the brightness 
of coming centuries may be upon his path ; and, 
whatever the complexion of his future history shall 
be, yet the sublime character of eternity shall rest 
upon it — it is because of these that humanity, 
however it be clothed and conditioned in- this 
evanescent world, should be the object of an awful 
reverence ; and if, by reason of those perishable 
glories which sit on a monarcli's brow for but one 
generation, it be imperative to honour the king — 
then, by reason of those glories which the meanest 
may attain to, and which are to last for ever, it 
is still more imperative to honour all men. 

It is in virtue of the natural equality between 
man and man, of the like noble prospects and the 
like high capacities among all the members of the 
species — that w^e have never hesitated on the ques- 
tion of popular or plebeian education ; and when it 
is asked, how far should the illumination of the 
lower orders in society be permitted to go? — we do 
not scruple to reply, that it should be to the very 
uttermost of what their taste and their time and 
their convenience will permit. There have been 
a dread and a jealousy upon this topic wherewith 
we cannot at all sympathize — somewhat of the 
saino alarm for the progress of scholarship amoiig 



I 



2i«0 ON THE HONOUR DUE TO ALL MEN. 

the working classes, that is felt for the progress of 
sedition — just as if the admission of light amongst 
them were to throw the whole mass into a state of 
busy and mischievous fermentation — ^and some 
great coming disorder were surely to result from 
the growing intelligence of those who form the 
vast majority of our commonwealth. And, in ad- 
dition to what injury it is apprehended the social 
edifice at large might sustain from the elevation of 
the popular mind, it is further thought that indivi- 
dually it is fraught with uttermost discomfort to 
the people themselves; that it will induce a rest- 
lessness, a discontent, a wayward ambition, wholly 
unsuited to their state as labourers ; that hence- 
forward they will spurn at the ignoble drudgeries 
of their lot ; and that the fruit of making thera 
scholars will be wholly to unhinge and unsettle 
them as workmen. And when once this impatience 
becomes general, a certain fierce and feverish 
aspiring, it is feared, will run throughout that class 
in society who even now by the superiority of their 
muscular force are enough formidable — and of 
whom the terror is, that when once a mental force 
is superadded to the muscular, they will overleap 
all the barriers of public safety, and be the fell 
instruments of a wild and wasteful anarchy over 
the face of the land. 

This is not altogether the place for exposing 
what we deem to be the utter groundlessness of 
such imaginations ; and therefore, without touching 
at all on the political apprehension lest Education 
should lodge a power that is dangerous in the 
bands of the labouring classes, — we shall just say 



ON THE HONOUR DUE TO ALL MEN. 291 

of the personal, or of that which relates to the 
habits and character of the indiv idual labourer, that 
we helieve it to be scarcely ever if at any time 
realized. We positively find them to be among 
the best symptoms of a trusty and well-conditioned 
mechanic, if, upon entering his house, we find the 
humble lii)rary upon his shelves — or if in taking 
account of his hours, we find the time which many 
give to evening dissipation given by him to the 
attendance or the preparations of a mechanic 
school. There is no such discrepancy between 
the powers and the principles of our complex 
nature, no such awkward sorting or balancing of 
parts in the human constitution, as that there must 
be a stifling of some in order to make room for the 
right and prosperous operation of the others — as, 
for example, that all liberal curiosity, all appetite 
for the informations of science should be kept in 
check, lest industry be relaxed, or the cares of a 
family provision be altogether forgotten. The 
ingredients of our compound being are really in far 
better adjustment than that all should be so very 
apt to go into disorder, upon any one of them 
being fostered into activity by the excitement of its 
own peculiar gratification — and it will be found 
that a taste for literature, and patient assiduity in 
labour, and a reflective prudence in every matter 
of family economics, and a habit of sound and good 
workmanship on the one hand, with a well exercised 
mtellect evan in the subjects of general speculatiou 
upon the other — that all these may be at work, 
and in fullest harmony together with one and the 
same individual. Instead of spoiling him as an 



2;;2 (;N THi: H()^:oUR OVE to all MEN. 

artisan, they wouiii oniy traiistorm him into alt 
artisan of a higher caste — and as there is a general 
movement all over the land for a higher education 
to our people, let us do nothing to curb tLe 
energies of their aspiring intellect — but rather 
rejoice in the bright anticipation that must at 
length be realized, of a well-taught and a highly- 
lettered peasantry. On a progress like this we 
would lay no limitation. Let it go freely and 
indefinitely onwards — nor be afraid, as many are, 
lest there should be too much of schooling or even 
too much of science for the common people. Th.it 
were a noble achievement in political economy, did 
it point out the way by which, through better wages 
and less work, the children of handicraft and of 
hard labour might be somewhat lightened of their 
toils. And that were a still nobler achievement in 
philanthropy, could their then wider and more 
liequent intervals of repose be reclaimed from 
loose and loathsome dissipation — could even an 
infant but growing taste for philosophy be made 
to supplant all the coarser depravities of human 
vice — and they, admitted to more of companionship 
than they now have with men of a higher walk in 
society, give frequent demonstration, that, even 
amid the drudgery of their humble condition, there 
was among them much of the unquenched fire of 
genius, and a still vigorous play of those perceptions 
and those powers by which our common nature is 
ennobled. 

Having said thus much for that education which 
gives the knowledge of science to the common 
people — we feel oursclve? placed on still higher 



ON THE HONOUR DUE TO ALL MEN. 293 

vantage ground, when we plead for that education 
to them which gives the knowledge of religion. If 
we hold the one to be desirable, we hold the other 
to be indispensable. In our estimation there is a 
certain nan-owness of soul, among those who are 
jealous even of their most daring ascents into the 
region of a higher scholarship ; but to lay an inter- 
dict upon all scholarship, is in truth nothing better 
than the midnight darkness of Popery. And yet, 
in certain quarters of our l-and, there still lurks, in 
deep and settled inveteracy, that intolerance which 
would withhold the very alphabet from our popula- 
tion ; and though in one respect, it is the key to 
the revealed mysteries of heaven, the instrument 
for unlocking that gospel which was designed so 
specially for the ignorant and the poor — yet still 
there be some who, aloft from all sympathy with 
the lower orders, can admit of no higher demand 
for them than the mere wants of their animal 
existence. The eternity of the poor does not enter 
into their care or computation at all. 'Jliey are 
viewed in scarcely any other light than as the 
mstruments of labour, as so many pieces of living- 
mechanism that have their useful application along 
with those other springs and principles of action 
which keep the busy apparatus of our great manu- 
factories in play — their limbs as the levers of a 
certain kind of machinery, and the spirit that is 
within them but as that mc ving force by which the 
human enginery is set agoing. The immortality 
of this spirit is as little regarded, as if it were 
indeed but a vapour that passeth away. It is 
valued only because of the materialism which if 



J94 ON THE HONOUR DUE TO ALL MEN. 

animates, or of the motion which by means of a 
curious and compUcated framework, it can impress 
on any tangible thing that is transformed thereby 
into some article of merchandise. It is thus that 
Humanity is apt to be addressed or treated with, 
singly for the physical strength which it might be 
made to yield in the service of busy artisanship— 
and, without one ungenerous reflection on the great 
capitalists of our land, it is thus that sometimes 
at least there is a certain grossness of mercantile 
spirit, in virtue of which, our nature, in despite of 
all its noble capacities, and the exceeding grandeur 
of its ultimate destination, is very apt to be grossly 
brutalized. 

It is therefore the more refreshing, when, in 
some densely peopled territory that is all in a 
fervour with the smoke and the din and the unre- 
mitting turmoil of its many fabrications, there is 
seen an interest to arise in the religion of the 
assembled host, and on the side of their immortal 
well-being — when, for so wide and plenteous a 
harvest, there at length appears a band of resolute 
and devoted labourers — when, in the midst of a 
field so rich in the materials for a great spiritual 
manufacture that hath its gains and its proceeds in 
eternity, men are to be found of compass enough 
and Cliristianity enough for this highest enterprise 
of charity — when a company is formed with a 
design and on a speculation so magnificent, as far 
to surpass the sublimest adventures of commerce — i 
and, instead of that transformation on the rude 
produce of our country, which is effected by the 
labour of human hands, it is proposed to go forth 



ON THE HONOUR DUE TO ALL MEN. 295 

on the people of the country as the subjects of a 
nobler transformation; and to impress upon human 
souls, now in the darkness and earthliness of nature, 
a glory that is unperishable. 

It is a reproach to the spirit of merchandise,— 
when in its exclusive demand for the physical 
strength and service of human beings, it gives but 
little regard to their eternity — yet among the sons 
of merchandise, we do meet with many of those 
zealous and enlightened philanthropists, who, by 
their efforts in the cause both of common and of 
Christian scholarship, have done much to redeem 
the imputation. There is indeed the grossest 
injustice in every imputation that leads to the 
fastening of an odium or an obloquy, upon a 
whole order^-and we might here take the opportu- 
nity of saying in refierence to another order, and 
when we hear so much of an alleged conspiracy 
on the part of monarchs against the illumination of 
our species, it is far indeed from holding universally. 
There is a growing liberality upon the subject 
among all the classes of society — and as surely as 
workmasters are now learning that education 
furnishes them with their best and most valua,ble 
seryants-^so surely will Kings also learn, that the 
firmest basis upon which their authority can bie 
upholden, is a virtuous and a well schooled pea- 
santry. 

The ancient prejudice upon this question is now 
on all hands rapidly subsiding. The cause of 
popular ignorance is no longer incorporated, as it 
wont to be, with the cause of loyalty and estab- 
lished order. Even they who sit in the highesi 



296 ON THE HONOUR I>UF, TO .\I.l, MEN. 

places, and were at all times the most sensitively 
fearful of any new element, that, when brought 
into play, might derange and unsettle the existing 
framework of society — even they can now look 
without alarm on that heaving of the popular mind 
towards a higher scholarship, which now is ferment- 
ing and spreading over the whole face of the British 
commonwealth. We are aware of nothing more 
truly important to the cause of education, than 
some recent practical testimonies of our landed 
aristocracy to the worth of Scotland's parochial 
teachers, and their offer of a helping hand to secure 
and to speed the ascent of our common people, 
though already perhaps the most lettered in Europe 
or in the world, even above the level of their 
present acquirements. There could not more 
authentic demonstration have been given, and 
from a quarter more thoroughly unsuspicious, to 
the safety of a learning for the vulgar — and there 
is nought more delightful than thus to behold 
the upper classes of society, giving welcome and 
encouragement to the lower for a nearer assimila- 
tion with tliemselves in that knowledge which is 
more honourable than wealth, in those mental 
accomplishments which shed its truest grace and 
dignity upon our nature. 

There are two opposite directions in which we 
have to witness what may be called an ultra or 
extreme politics. One of those extremes is now 
getting fast obsolete at least in Scotland — for in 
our sister country there is still an inveteracy about 
it, which may not give way for perhaps one or two 
generations. To picture it forth most effectually, 



ON TKZ BOVOVR 0VE TO AIX MEN. 297 

«re might fieize in iir.agination upon some one 
oidividual by Avhom it is realized — who, frank and 
generous and kind-hearted in all the relations ol 
private society, yet on every question of public or 
parliamentary warfare shows all the fiercest anti- 
pathies of high and antiquated cavaliership— who, 
merciful and munificent in all his dealings with his 
own people, yet eyes a boding mischief in every new 
and advancing movement by the people of the land 
— who deems it perhaps one of the glories of Old 
England to have a jovial and well fed peasantry, 
yet would feel the education of them to be a raising 
oi them out of their places, and so a disturbance 
on the sober and settled orthodoxy of other days — : 
who fears a lurking sectarianism in this active and 
widely diffused scholarship — that might afterwards 
break forth into outrage on England's venerated 
throne, and her noble hierarchy ; and therefore 
would vastly rather than this age of philanthropic 
restlessness, have the age brought back again, 
when pastime and holiday and withal a veneration 
for Church had full ascendant over the hearts and 
habits of a then unlettered population. Still in 
many of England's princely halls, in many a bar- 
onial residence, there exists a feeling that her 
golden time has passed away — and that this new 
device of a popular education is among the deadhest 
of the destroyers. High in loyalty, and devoted 
by all the influences of sentiment and ancestry 
and sworn partisanship to the prerogatives of 
monarchy ; they honour the king — but, overlooking 
the intellect and the capacity, and the immor^al 
nature that reside even in the meanest of his sub- 
m2 



298 ON THE HONOUR DUE TO ALL MZit. 

jects, and so regardless as tbe^ cire of the still higher 
prerogatives of mind ; they do not and they know 
not how to honour all men. 

But in counterpart to this, there is another 
extreme that to our taste is greatly more offensive 
than the former — when the cause of education 
is vilified by mixing up with it in the meantime, 
that accursed thing which education at length will 
utterly exterminate — when a mechanic school 
is made the vehicle of an outrageous disaffection 
to all authority, and a mechanic publication 
breathes the fierceness of radicalism throughout 
all its pages — when one cannot in any way devise 
either for the religion or the science of our lower 
orders, but this unclean spirit must insinuate and 
'turn it all to loathsomeness ; and every honest 
effort to obtain a more enlightened peasantry is 
either paralyzed or poisoned, by the obtruded 
alliance of men, who bear no other regard to the 
people than as the instruments of some great public 
or political overthrow. Still it vouches nobly for 
the good of a people's scholarship, that this abuse 
is chiefly exemplified in that land where they are 
just emerging from ignorance, and that in our own 
more lettered country it is comparatively unknown 
— that it is there and not here where this cause has 
been seized upon by demagogues, who, while they 
would flatter the multitude into the belief that they 
honour all men, give full manifestation by all their 
writings and their ways that they do not honour 
the king. 

It is in such conflicts of human passion and 
human party, that Christianity comes forth in th#» 



ON THE HONOUR DUE TO ALL MEN. 299 

meekness of wisdom, and points out to us the more 
excellent way. It unites loyalty to the King with 
xove nay reverence for the very humblest of his 
subject population — and can both do homage to 
the dignity of office that sits upon the one, and to 
those exalted capacities both of worth and of 
intellect which lie in wide and wealthy diffusion 
through the other. There is nought of the pusil- 
lanimous in its devotion to the Crown, and nought 
of the factious and the turbulent in the descents 
which it makes among the common people. We 
have felt that glow which the presence of a monarch 
can awaken, when, instead of the crouching servility 
of bondsmen, we are conscious of nothing but the 
generous and high-minded enthusiasm of gallant 
chivalry. And equal to this is the pure and phil- 
anthropic triumph which the spectacle of a beggar's 
school is fitted to awaken, when instead of a fiery 
sedition lighted up in the heart and rankling its 
mischievous fermentations there, the mind indulges 
in the soothing perspective of that brighter day, 
when the whole community of our empire shall be 
moulded into a harmonious and well ordered 
family. To call forth the energies of the popular 
mind by the power of a high education being made 
to bear upon it, will most surely add to the stability 
of the throne, while it must serve to lift and to 
embellish the whole platform of society. It will 
speed the progress of the species, but not along a 
track of revolutionary violence. The moral per- 
fectibility of the infidel may call for the demolition 
both of altars and of thrones — but the operations 
of the Christian philanthropist leave the fabric of 



300 ON THE HONOUR DUE TO ALL MEN. 

our civil polity untouched ; and, in that Millennium 
after which he aspires, he sees Kings to be the 
nursing fathers and Queens the nursing mothers 
of our Zion. He has no fellowship either with 
those who would revile the monarch, or who would 
refuse to enlighten the people — and, though fired 
with the hopes of some great and coming enlarge- 
ment, he founds them on the prophecies of a book, 
wliose precepts within the utterance of one breatb 
and placed together in the same text, are to honoU' 
the King and to honour all men. 



MORAL INFLUENCE OF FIDELITY. 30 J 

DISCOURSE XIV. 

ON THE MORAL INFLUENCE OF FIDELITY. 



" Not purloining, but showing all good fidelity ; that they maj 
adorn the doctrine of Qod our Saviour in all things." — TiTus 
ii. 10. 

It is the duty of the Christian minister to bring 
forward not one part of the divine will, but all the 
parts of it — and whatever he sees urged and insisted 
upon in the Bible, he lies under the solemn obliga- 
tion of urging and insisting upon it also. Now 
it is remarkable, that, when urging some of the 
commandments, he is looked upon as more religious- 
ly employed, than when urging some other of the 
commandments. There are certain subjects which 
do not carry to the eye of many, the same aspect 
of godliness with others. A sermon on sabbath- 
breaking, for example, would be regarded as a 
more characteristic exercise, and as more allied 
with the solemn and appropriate functions of the 
pulpit, than a sermon upon theft; and, generally 
speaking, while the duties of the first table are 
listened to by the more serious professors of 
Christianity w^ith a pious and respectful feeling of 
their high importance — it may be observed that 
the duties of the second table, when urged in 
all their minuteness, and brought forward in all 
their varieties, and illustrated by references to the 
homely and famihar experience of human life, are 
looked upon as having a certain degree of earthli- 



302 MORAL INFLUENCE OF FIDELITY. 

ness about them — to be as much inferior in point 
of religiousness to the duties of the first table, as 
the employments of a common week-day are in- 
ferior to the employments of the sabbath — in a 
word, while the one btars to many the aspect of 
sacredness, the other bears ttie s^f.^'Ct of secularity 
— and when a minister gives his strength and his 
earnestness for a whole sermon to the latter, there 
is a feelmg among his hearers that he has descended 
from that high ground on which a godly or an 
orthodox minister loves to expatiate. 

We forbear at present to enter into the explana- 
tion of this very notable peculiarity, though it does 
admit we think of a most interesting explanation. 
The thing complained of, forms a serious obstacle 
hi the wav of our attempts to enforce the whole 
will of God, and to explain the whole of his counsel. 
If there be any part of that will of which the ex- 
position is resisted as a very odd and uncommon 
and perhaps ridiculous sut)ject from the pulpit, how 
shall we be able to command a reverential hearing^ 
for it? In what way shall we establish the authority 
of God over all the concerns of a man's history ? 
Should not the solemnity of religious obligation 
be made to overspread the whole field and compass 
of human afiairs? — and if it be not so is not this 
deposing God from the supremacy which belongs 
to Him? Is it not just saying that there are places 
and occasions in which we will not have Him to 
reign over us ? Is it not disownhig His right ol 
having all things done to His ghry ? And those 
earers who love to be told of what they owe to 
d on the sabbath and in the holy days of sacra- 



MORAL INFLUENCE OF FIDELITY. 303 

ment and prayer — but who love not to be told of 
what they owe Him in their shops and in their 
market places and in their every-day employmentf 
— they are just narrowing the limits of His juris- 
diction, and with all their seeming reverence foif 
godliness as the only high and appropriate theme 
for the pulpit, they are in fact wresting from God 
his sovereignty over the great bulk of human 
existence. With the quitrent of a few occasional 
acknowledgements, they are for securing the 
mighty remainder of time to themselves — and are 
for putting off with fragments that Being who 
demands of all His creatures, the homage of an 
entire service — the incense of a perpetual offering. 
We should like all hearers to feel the religiousness 
of that topic which this text leads us to insist upon. 
We should like them to annex as serious a feeling ot 
solemnity and obligation to the eighth of God's com- 
mandments, as to the fourth of His commandments. 
Both were announced in thunder from mount 
Sinai. Both were heard to issue in the same 
voice of authority from the throne of the lawgiver. 
The violations of both are written in the book of 
God's remembrance ; and they are ranked among 
the bad deeds done in the body, which will bring 
down from the judgment-seat the same awful doom 
upon the children of iniquity. The place which 
the commandment possesses in the catalogue is 
surely of no great consequence in the matter. 
Enough that it be a commandment. Enough for 
one and for all of us that thus saith the Lord. He 
orders one thing, and He orders another. If the 
one thing must be observed with reverence, because 



304 MORAL INFLUENCE OF FIDELITY, 

He orders it — there is precisely the same reason 
for the other thing being also observed with rever- 
ence. And if "sanctity the oabbath-day and keep 
it holy" be a godly and religious subject, then do 
we contend that, " Thou shalt not steal" is a godly 
and a religious subject also. 

In this case the minister has no choice. If the 
consciences of any of his hearers are blind upon 
this subject, that is the very reason why he should 
labour to open and to enlighten them. He stands 
charged with the office of expounding and urging 
and solemnly insisting upon all the requisitions 
of the Bible. If he do not warn the sinner from his 
way, the sinner will die in his iniquity, but his blood 
will be required of him. This is perfectly decisive 
as to his conduct. It is with him a matter of seit- 
intei-est, as well as of duty, to warn his hearers 
against all sin — and, knowing as he does that there 
is an awful day of reckoning before them, that he 
must appear in the midst of them at the bar ot 
God, that he will be called upon to give an account 
of them and be examined upon this, whether he 
has w atched over the souls of his people, and faith- 
fully attempted to guard them against all error, 
and to warn them against all unrighteousness — woe 
be to him if he is deterred by any senseless or 
ignorant levity whatever, from coming forward with 
a faithful and a firm exposition of the truth, or 
from sounding in their ears this awful testimony 
of God's abhorrence of the sin of stealing, that 
thieves shall not inherit the kingdom of God. 

In the further prosecution of this discourse, wo 
shall first endeavour to explain what the precise 



MOnAL INFLUENCE OF FIDELITY. 305 

6'ii is which the text warns us against. We shall 
secondly insist on its exceeding sinfulness, in spite 
of all the pleas which are offered to palliate or to 
excuse it. And thirdly we shall press the duty 
which is opposed to the sin of the text, that is, 
good fidelity by the motive which the text itself 
insists upon, that we may adorn the doctrine of 
God our Saviour in all things. 

The sin of the text receives a particular name, 
and it must therefore receive a particular explana- 
tion. It is not called stealing, though it be 
certainly a species of it. Stealing is neither more 
nor less than taking to oneself what belongs to 
another, and what he does not give. We should 
apply this term to the act of a man who entered 
into another house than that in which he tarried, 
and bore away of the moveables he found in it — 
or to the act of a man who came to another farm 
than that on which he laboured, and carried off 
such produce as he could lift away with him — or 
to the act of a man who made out his access into 
a shop or a workhouse belonging to another master, 
and abstracted such money or such goods as he 
could lay his hand upon. There are so many acts 
of theft — and to give a clear idea of what that is 
which turns an act of theft into an act of purloining, 
we have only to conceive, that, instead of another 
entering the house, a servant within it were to help 
himself to such things as he had access to, with- 
out any understood allowance from the master or 
the mistress who employed him — or that, instead of 
another coming to a farm, a labourer belonging to it 
were to make a daily and a w eekly habit of secret- 



30f3 MOrtAl. INTI.UF.NCr. OF FIDELITY. 

iiig a part of its produce, for the purpose of feeding 
lii.s own little stock, or helping out the maintenance 
of his young family — or that, instead of another 
tindiug his way into your shop or your workhouse, 
the man you employed to keep the one or to work 
in the other, were to pocket for his own use what 
he thinks he might bear away without too great a 
hazard of detection. All these are so many un- 
doubted examples of theft — but such a theft as 
would more readily be characterised by the term 
purloining, 'lo steal is to take that which is not 
our own. To purloin is to take that which is not 
our own — but then the thing so taken must be that 
which we have in trust, or that to which our situation 
as an agent or a servant or an overseer gives us 
free and frequent access. When purloining is 
done upon a large scale it sometimes changes its 
name, though not its nature. It is then called an 
embezzlement. To embezzle is quite equivalent 
to purloin in the nature of the act, though greater 
in the extent of it. Thus we have heard of the 
embezzlement of public stores, of the embezzlement 
of the royal treasury. It is an act of theft per- 
formed by a confidential agent of the crown — and 
we have succeeded in the object of all these ex- 
planations, if we have led our hearers to perceive 
the reason why Paul addresses the advice of the 
text to people in a particular situation. They 
are in the situation of servants — and, taking in 
the 9th verse, the whole advice runs thus, " Exhort 
servants to be obedient unto their own masters, and 
to please them well in all things, not answering 
again; not purloining, but showing all good fidelity, 



MORAL INFLUENCE OF FIDELITY. 307 

that they may adorn the doctrine of God our 
Saviour in all things.' 

We now proceed in the second place to insist on 
the exceeding sinfulness of this sin, in spite of all 
the pleas which are oifered to palliate or to excuse 
it 

The first palliation is a kind of tacit one, by 
which the understanding is imposed upon, and the 
conscience quieted, merely through the change of 
name which this crime has undergone. Because it 
is not commonly called stealing, it is not conceived 
to have the disgrace or the odiousness of stealing. 
There is a wonderful power of imposition in words 
- — and how many a purloiner may quiet all that is 
troublesome within him by the reflection that what 
he does is not stealing ; it is only talcing. Thus may 
he try to escape the imputation of stealing, by 
merely giving a different name to his iniquity — but, if 
the thing thus taken be not his to take, it is to ail 
intents and purposes, stealing — he merits the full 
disgrace of beli-ig called a thief — and, what is still 
more awful than all the disgrace with which this 
world can cover him, he is guilty of a sin, which, 
if persisted in, will most infallibly exclude him from 
the inheritance of the kingdom of God. To un- 
deceive him, he should be made distinctly to know 
that there is no difference v/hatever in the sins ; 
that an angry and offended God looks with equal 
displeasure upon both, and will assign to each the 
same awful punishment in the great day of reckon- 
ing. This low work of purloining is just stealing 
under another name. It is taking what belongs to 
another, and what that other has not given. Every 



308 MORAL INFLUENCE OF FIDELITY. 

understanding will acknowledge, that, however it 
may be glossed over by another and a milder 
designation, it is an act of theft ; and what every 
understanding will acknowledge, we want every 
conscience to feel. But we go further. We take 
up a principle contained in our Shorter Catechism, 
where it is said, in answer to the question, " Are 
all sins equally heinous in the sight of God ?" 
That "some sins, by reason of several aggrava- 
tions, are more heinous in the sight of God than 
others." Now purloining contains in it an aggra- 
vation which does not belong to a bare and simple 
example of stealing. The stranger who does not 
know me, and whom I never trusted, may come to 
my premises and steal of my property. But the 
servant who purloins does know me, lives under 
my roof, is maintained by my wages, and, above all, 
has had a confidence placed in him which he has 
chosen to abuse and to violate. I left a door open, 
or I made over a charge, or I invested him with a 
particular commission, and why ? because I had 
faith in his integrity and discretion. The stranger 
thief is guilty of one vice — an act of dishonesty. 
The household thief is dishonest too ; but he is 
more than this. He has betrayed the trust I put 
in him. He has repaid my good opinion of him, 
by an act of ingratitude and an act of unfaithful- 
ness. I was led away by his fair appearances ; 
and he has turned out a hypocrite. He has added 
to the guilt of stealing, the guilt of cunning and 
falsehood and habitual concealment. These are 
aggravations which make the purloining of the ser- 
vant far more provoking to him who suffers bj it. 



MORAL INFLUENCE OF FIDELITY. 309 

than the depredations of the nightly vagabond. 
But they are not only more provoking to man — 
they are more provoking to a just and a holy God. 
The aggravations which we have just now spoken 
of will tell on the awful sentence of the great day. 
The discerner of the thoughts and intents of the 
heart sees and judges of every one of them ; and 
when the time cometh that the secrets of all hearts 
shall be laid open, the low pilferments of the farm, 
of the family, and of the workshop, will appear to 
the shame and condemnation of the guilty. 

But there is another plea on which the purloiner 
tries to find himself something like an acquittal, 
from the shame and the remorse of his secret ini- 
quities. However great at the end of months or 
of years his depredations may be in the amount, 
yet, to escape detection, he is forced to make them 
small in the detail. The distinct and single theft of 
every one day is but a petty affair — and his con- 
science easily falls into the snare, that, as what he 
does take at any one time is so very little it is not 
worth the thinking of. But what right has he, we 
would ask, to make any addition to the eighth com- 
mandment ? God says, " Thou shalt not steal," 
and then he brings the commandmert to a close. 
He does not say thou shalt not steal much, leaving 
us at freedom to steal a little, and to judge how 
little we may steal with innocence and safety. He 
says, thou shalt not steal, and then he leaves off. 
If we steal the value of a farthing, it is a stolen 
farthing. It is evidence enough to convict of a 
breach of the eighth commandment, by which we 
are enjoined not to steal at all. Little as we may 



310 MORAL INFLUEN'CE Ot HUELITY. 

think of it, it is enough to convict us of disobedience 
to the entire and absolute commandment of God — . 
and it will turn out the accursed thing, which, if 
not repented of and not turned from, will be the 
death and the condemnation of our souls. lie that 
is unjust in the least, says our Saviour, is unjust 
also in much. It maybe so little as to be the very 
least — but if stolen, it is an act of injustice — and 
he who knew what was in man says, that he who can 
do the very least act of injustice can do a great 
one. O how many go to Hell with what they 
account small sins. Small sin ! is sin a small 
matter ? If we have stolen to the value of a 
single grain, we have broken the law of God ; and 
do we call that an affair of small consequence ? 
The moment we stretch forth our hand to what is 
another's, be it ever so little, we have broken the 
line which lies betwixt duty and rebellion. We 
have got over the wall which separates lawful from 
forbidden ground, and, however little way wehavegot 
on the forbidden grovmd, still we are on it — and, if 
apprehended there and brought to the bar of judg- 
ment, we shall be treated as criminals. Go not, ye 
purloiners and household thieves, to delude your 
consciences any more upon this subject. Go not 
to makt iny distinction which the law of God does 
not make. Think not that you will escape con- 
demnation ; because the thing stolen is so very 
little. Think not that this plea will serve you 
with God whose law must be fulfilled to the very 
last jot and tittle of it — and we tell you that if you 
ever pray and lift up your hands unto God — then 
though you have stolen only to the amount of » 



MORAL INFLUENCE OF FIDELITY. 3i 

morsel or a fragment which does not belong to 
you, God will look upon your hands and see them 
to be unclean. The defilement of the thing stolen 
sticks to them ; and He beholding it will turn in 
indignation from your prayers and your offering. 

The next plea we propose to your attention is, 
that the master out of whose stock we have pur- 
loined is rich — he will not miss it, and it can do 
him no harm. Still making additions of their own 
you observe to the law of God. Still doing as the 
Pharisees did before them — making the command- 
ment of God of none effect by their traditions, and 
teaching for doctrines the commandments and 
inventions of men. God says thou shalt not steal. 
He does not say thou shalt not steal from the 
poor, leaving us at liberty to steal from the rich 
whenever we have opportunity. The distinction 
betwixt rich and poor in this matter is a distinction 
of their own. By making this plea they not only 
disobey God ; but they insult Him by offering to 
mend His law, and bringing forward what they 
think a better one of their own. Heaven and 
earth shall pass away, but the word of God shall 
not pass away. And that word is — let him that 
stole steal no more. There is no allusion to rich 
or poor in this injunction. Nay in the text it is 
stealing from the rich that is expressly forbidden. 
The poor, generally speaking, are the servants ; 
and the rich, generally speaking, are the masters — . 
and servants are ordered not to purloin from their 
masters, but to show all good fidelity. No there 
is nothing for it, but an entire separation from this 
uuclean and accursed practice. It is an expresi 



312 MOUM. INTLlFXCr. OF FIDKI.ITY. 

Tiolation of God's law ; aiul admits of no plea, no 
palliation. It is a dangerous experiment to trifle 
with sin, and to venture upon what we are pleased 
to think the I'^^ser shades and deg];ees of it. The 
moment thai sin is committed even in the very 
least degrees of it, the fence which separates obedi- 
ence from rebellion is broken down. After we 
have got over that fence, there is no saying how 
far we may go. After a garden wall is once leaped, 
it is not doing much more to enter its most precious 
depositaries, and spoil it of its fairest and richest 
productions. And here we may repeat, by the 
way, that the first sin ever committed by man 
forms a striking refutation of the two pleas which 
we are now attempting to expose. The thing 
stolen was a fruit. The master he stole it from 
was the Lord of Heaven and of Earth — to whom 
belongs the cattle on a thousand hills, and who sits 
surrounded with the wealth of innumerable worlds. 
What becomes of the smallness of the sin now ? 
It was just this sin which banished Adam from 
paradise, which broke up the communion between 
earth and heaven — ^which entailed ruin on a whole 
species of moral and intelligent creatures The 
infidel laughs at the story, and with all the parade 
of an enlightened wisdom lie counts it ridiculous — 
he thinks how paltry the offence — and how big the 
mischief and the ruin which are stated to have 
sprung from it. But he only betrays the grossness 
of a mind, which cannot rise above the estimatea 
and the calculations of an ordinary man — which 
looks no further than to the visible performance, 
and is blind to the only principle which gives to 



MORAL INFLUENCE OF FIDELITY. 313 

the performance its moral character. It is not in 
the magnitude of the thing done, that the chief 
magnitude of the offence hes. It is the state of 
mind imphed by the doing of it. Had Adam rooted 
out every tree of paradise and dismantled the gar- 
den of all its beauties — we might have thought that 
his offence lay in the material extent of the injury 
that was done by him. But Adam did no more 
than steal a forbidden fruit ; and, for any evil 
performed by his hand, Eden might have remained 
in all its bloom and in all its loveliness. But in 
proportion as the material hurt was small, is the 
grandeur and the entireness of the moral lesson 
conveyed by it. It leads our single eye to the 
foulness of that turpitude which lies in disobedience 
to God. The thing done was small in itself — but 
it carried rebellion in its principle. Thus saith 
the Lord, was the sanction which lay upon it — and 
that sanction was trampled upon. When God said 
Let there be light and there was light — we look 
upon this as a sublime and wonderful evidence of 
His power. When God said In the day he eateth 
he shall die, and he did eat, and from that moment 
a cloud of malignant darkness gathered upon the 
head of the offender, and hangs to this hour over 
his distant posterity — we look upon this as an 
evidence no less sublime of His truth and of His 
righteousness. The simplicity of the visible act 
enables us to see the spiritual character of this 
great transaction in all its majesty — nor can the 
senseless levities we have heard on the subject of 
Adam's fall, keep us from viewing it as one in 
dignity with the other events of that wonderful 

VOL. VI. o 



314 MORAL INFLUENCE OF FIDELITY. 

period, when the Ahnighty had spread a new 
creation around him, and displayed the attributes 
of His high and unchangeable nature among the 
beings whom He had formed. 

Take this lesson to yourselves, ye purloiners, 
who are going on deceiving your consciences, and 
heaping ruin and condemnation upon your deluded 
souls. You think the thing purloined is so very 
small, and the master you stole it from is so very 
rich. But what right have you to set your think- 
ings and your excusings, against the awful authority 
of " Thus saith the Lord"? It is no matter how 
small the theft. It is no matter how rich the man 
who suffers by it. God's authority is trampled 
upon by the act. His Holy Bible is despised. 
His judgment is bid defiance to — and the saying of 
the Apostle Paul is as much slighted and under- 
valued as if no Apostle had ever said it, that thieves 
shall not inherit the kingdom of God. O, if any 
of you have been hitherto deceived upon this sub- 
ject, suffer now the word of exhortation. Go 
not to trifle any longer with the precious interest 
of your souls. Resist not what we say, because it 
touches painfully upon your practices or your 
consciences. We mean no offence. We want to 
stir up no anger among you. We bring forward 
no railing accusation. It is the general and un- 
ceasing importance of the subject which has led us 
to fix upon it; for we give you our solemn assurance, 
that we know of no act of purloining committed by 
any one of you — nor do we have in our eye a single 
guilty individual. For any thing we know, there 
8 not one of you who is not nobly superior to the 



MORAL INFLUENCE OF FIDELITY. 515 

slightest taint and degree of this iniquity — and, in 
this case, the sole use of this sermon may be that 
you shall be kept ulean through the word now 
spoken to you. But lest there should be a pur- 
loiner in this congregation, we think it our high 
and awfully incumbent duty, to stretch forth our 
hand that we may arrest and reclaim him from that 
road of perdition on which he is hastening — and 
surely you will grant us your indulgence, when we 
say that in doing what we have done, we have only 
lifted our testimony against what we honestly 
believe would land him in everlasting burnings if it 
be persisted in. 

But let us now endeavour, in the third place, to 
press the duty which is opposed to the sin of the 
text, that is, good fidelity — by the motive which 
the text itself insists upon, that you may adorn the 
doctrine of God our Saviour in all things. Let 
us observe, however, that the servants whom Titua 
was to exhort, were among the people of his own 
congregation. They formed a Christian commu 
nity ; and, whatever kind of people this designation 
may be applied to now-a-days, it was applied in 
those days to men, who, in embracing the profes- 
sion of the faith, formally renounced the errors or 
the idolatries of their former years — to men, who, 
in making this profession, must generally speak- 
ing have been moved to it by a real belief in the 
great and prominent truths of that new religion 
which was proposed to them : Or, in other words, 
the exhortation of the text is recommended by 
Paul to be addressed to men, who, not only em- 
braced the profession of the faith, but had embraced 



316 MORAL INFLUENCE OF FIDELITY. 

the faith — to men who felt the influence of the 
great doctrines of Christianity — to men who had 
God revealed to them in their Saviour, and knew 
of the grace of God that bringeth salvation, and 
were under that process of teaching which the 
grace of God is employed in carrying on, and the 
object of which is that we should deny ungodliness 
and worldly lusts and live soberly righteot^sly 
and godly in this present evil world. We know 
well the use that has been made of these considera- 
tions. Bring, it is said, these dissuasives against 
their evil practices to bear upon Christian servants. 
Exhort those who ai'e already in tlie faith ; and, 
as to those who are not in the faith, including for 
any thing we know the great mass of servants 
who are now before us, suspend all our attacks 
upon their sins, till we have brought them to the 
Saviour — furnish them with a Christian motive, 
before we press them to a Christian reformation — . 
make them the subjects of grace, by giving them 
that faith which has the promise of the Spirit, ere 
v/e attempt that teaching which can only be done 
effectually by the grace that bringeth salvation. 
Now, it is all very true that no obedience is pure in 
its principle, but that to which we are constrained 
by the love of God reconciled to us in Christ Jesus 
— no obedience is successful in its accomplishment, 
but that which is wrought through the strength of 
Him who confers power to become the children of 
God only on those who believe — no obedience is 
acceptable to the Father, but such as is offered up 
in the name of the Son. All this is most true— 
and it must be our incessant object to grow ia such 



MORAL INFLUENCE OF FIDELITY. 311 

obedience, by growing in the only principle which 
can actuate and uphold it. But recollect that 
there are expedients set agoing by the wisdom pi 
God for bringing men to Christ — and there are 
considerations addressed to sinners for the purpose 
of convincing them of danger, and forcing them to 
flee for refuge unto Christ- — and there are certain 
performances, which, in the very act of coming 
unto Christ, they are called upon to do — and, 
therefore it is, that, though at this moment you 
r.iay be out of Christ and away from Him, we count 
it a seasonable topic for each and all of you, when 
we tell you of the exceeding sinfulness of every one 
sin with which you are chargeable. It is right 
that every kind of unrighteousness should be made 
manifest to your consciences — for the wrath of 
God is revealed against all unrighteousness. It 
is right that every purloiner should be made to 
know what thousands and thousands more of pur- 
loiners are not aware of, that the heavy judgment 
of God lies upon them for that offence which they 
are apt to look on as so light and so common and 
60 natural and so excusable. It is right they should 
be made to understand, how great the danger is, 
and what the place of security to flee to — and 
surely, the more they are burdened with a sense 
of the wrath of God, the more will they feel the 
weight and importance of the saying, that unless 
tliey believe in Christ this wrath abidetli on them. 
And siu-ely if Christ said at the very outset, repent 
and believe the Gospel — if He said, he that fol- 
loweth after me must forsake all — if the "rac-e o. 
God at the first moment of its appearance, taughl 



318 MORAL INFLUENCE OF FIDELITY. 

men to deny ungodliness and worldly lusts — we are 
not out of place when we tea the most ignorant 
and graceless purloiner among you, to turn him to 
Christ that he may obtain the forgiveness of all 
his misdoings ; and when we tell him within the 
compass of the same breathing to turn him from 
his iniquities — that the man who keeps by his sins 
is in fact keeping away from the Saviour — that he 
is loving darkness rather than light because hi? 
deeds are evil — that he is not coming to the 
Saviour, for he is not doing what all who come 
must and will do — he is not stirring himself up in 
the business of forsaking all. The evil and inve- 
terate habits of an unfaithful servant he will not 
forsake. He clings to them as so many idols that 
he cannot bring himself to part with. Christ, who 
claims the authority of his alone master, does not 
prevail upon him to give up the service of those 
sins which lord it over him. And it is, therefore, 
that he should know, how every day that he per- 
sists in this forbidden practice, he is treasuring 
up wrath against the day of wrath, and putting 
the grace of an offered salvation and the voice of a 
beseeching God away from him. 

Let us therefore urge it most earnestly upon 
you that you consider your doings. Christ is wil- 
ling to receive you ; and, if you are willing to come 
to Him, to you belongs the whole extent of His 
purchased salvation. But you are not willing to 
come to Him, if you are more willing to retain 
your iniquities ; and in these iniquities you will die. 
Sell your goods to feed the poor, says oui Saviour 
to the young man in the Gospel, and then com« 



MORAL INFLUENCE OF FIDELITY, 319 

and follow me ; but he would not come to Him upos 
these terms, and his devotedness to his wealth v/as 
the bar that stood in his way to the kingdom oi 
God. In like manner we call upon you purloiners 
to cleanse your hands and come to the Saviour. 
If you will not come upon these terms, the rich 
man had his bar in the way of salvation, and you 
have yours. He would not give up his property, 
and you will not give up the produce of your petty 
pilferments. You are not willing to come to Christ 
that you may have life — for, sweet as is the life which 
is at his giving, it is not so sweet to your taste, 
as Ls the sweetness of those stolen waters which 
have hitherto been your secret and your habitual 
enjoyment. Esau sold his birthright for a mess 
of pottage, and he is therefore called the profane 
Esau. How much more profane are you, who are 
putting the offer of a birthright in heaven away 
from you — and for what ? — for the crumbs and frag- 
ments of your paltry depredations. From this 
moment we charge you to touch them no more. Bid 
your hand cease from its pilferments ; and compel 
it to your bidding. If what we have said tell upon 
your conscience, this very night will it tell upon 
your conduct- To-morrow comes, and it will find 
you a reforming man— earnest how to find your 
salvation, and busy to frame your doings that you 
may turn unto the Lord. You will get up from 
the bed of reflection, with the purpose of keeping 
yourself clear and aloof from your wonted dis- 
honesties; and, with a prayer that you may be 
strengthened in the execution of this purpose. 
Till we see something of this kind, v/e see no en* 



3S'0 MORAL INFLUENCE OF FIDELITY. 

dence of your yet having taken a single step to the 
Saviour. Keep by the purloinings against which 
we have been charging you ; and you are not 
so much as moving towards Christ, nor will you 
ever reach Him. Cease then from them at this 
moment — do this in the very act of going to the 
Saviour and seeking after him ; and who knows 
but this first and foremost of your visible reforma- 
tions, humble as it is when compared with the accom- 
plishments of him who stands perfect and com- 
plete in the whole will of God, who knows but it 
may betoken the commencement of a good work 
in your soul ? — that awakening of the sinner's eye 
on which Christ has promised that he shall give 
light — the outset of that path which conducts from 
one degree of grace unto another, till you reach 
the stature of the full grown Christian — an earlier 
stage of the journey which conducts him who 
cometh unto Christ to all His promised manifesta- 
tions, that, made to shine upon your head will 
make you rejoice more and more in the perfections 
of His righteousness, in the fulness of His grace 
and the freeness of His kind invitations, in the 
sureness of those never-failing supplies out of 
which you are strengthened with all might in the 
inner man, and enabled to do all things through 
the spirit which is given unto you. 

We now proceed to the motive which Paul urged 
upon the servants he was addressing — that they 
might adorn the doctrine of God their Saviour iq 
ail things. We think that two very distinct, and, 
at the same time very affecting and important 
lessons, may be drawn from this single clause of 



MORAL INFLUENCE OF FIDELITY. 321 

the verse now before us. The first is that a man'a 
Christianity might be made to show itself through- 
out the whole business of his vocation, whatever i\ 
may be — that it may be made to give a pervading 
expression to his whole history — that it might 
accompany and be at work with him throughout 
every doing and every exercise he can put his hand 
to — that, in a word, the influence of its spirit is a 
perennial influence, ever present in the heart, and 
ever sending forth a powerful and a perpetual con- 
trol over the conduct. It is not merely in one 
thing, or in another thing, that the doctrine 
of Christ is capable of being adorned. It admits 
of being adorned in all things. Doctrine some- 
times signifies the thing taught; and it sometimes 
signifies the process of teaching. We understand 
it more in the latter sense on the present occasion. 
Show how excellent, and how purifying, and how 
universal, in point of salutary influence, this 
teaching is. Show how completely it goes over 
the whole round of human performances. Show 
with what a comprehensive eye, it surveys the 
map of human life, and stamps its own colour and 
gives its own outline to its most remote and 
subordinate provinces. Let the world see, that 
wherever a man of Christian doctrine is present, 
and whatever the employment be that he is en- 
gaged with, there at all times goes along with him 
a living exhibition of the power and the efficacy of 
Christian doctrine ; that he represents by every 
one action the character of the gospel which he 
professes ; that the stamp o^ its morality may be 
recognised on his every distinct and separate per- 
o 2 



322 MORAL INFLUENCE OF FIDELITY. 

formance ; and that others may say of each and of 
all his doings, that this is done in the style and 
manner of a Christian. 

When a man becomes Christian, what we would 
ask is the most visible expression of the change 
which has taken effect upon him ? We are not 
speaking of the change in its essential character, 
which is neither more nor less than a thorough and 
aspiring devotedness to the will of that God whom 
he now sees by the eye of faith to be reconciled to 
him through the blood of an everlasting covenant. 
The question we are putting relates to the seen 
effect of this principle upon the man's outward 
liabits and performances ; and we ask which is the 
most notable and conspicuous effect, and such as 
will most readily arrest the eye and the observation 
of acquaintances? We know well what the general 
impression of the world is upon this subject. They 
think when a man undergoes that mysterious and 
unaccountable thing which is called conversion ; the 
most palpable transformation it makes upon him is 
to turn him into a psalm-singing, a church-going, an 
ordinance-keeping, and a prayer-making Christian, 
They positively do not look for such a change on the 
common ftsd week-day history of this said convert, 
as they do on the style and character of his sabbath 
observations. But yet there is a something that 
they will look for ^n week days too. They will 
look for a more decided aspect of sobriety. They 
will look for a more demure and melancholy secJ-r- 
sion from his old acquaintances. They will look 
for a clear and total renunciation of all that is 
intemperate, and of all tliat is licentious. They 



MORAL INFLUENCE OF FIDELITY. 323 

will look for a final adieu from those habits of 
intoxication, or those habits of profligacy, or those 
habits of companionable indulgence, to which the 
young of every great city are introduced with a 
facility and a readiness so alarming to the heart of 
every Christian parent ; and in the prosecution oi 
which they widen by every day of thoughtlessnesa 
their departure from God ; and accumulate upon 
them the burden of his righteous indignation ; and 
lull their consciences into such a slumber, as to 
thousands and thousands more will at length sink 
and deepen into the sleep of death ; and bring the 
whole power of their example to bear upon the 
simple and the uninitiated. And thus does the 
tide of corruption maintain its unabated force and 
fulness from one period to another; and is strength- 
ened by yearly contributions out of the wreck of 
youthful integrity ; and, did not the cheering light 
of prophecy assure us that through the omnipotence 
of a pure gospel better days of reformation and of 
virtue were to come, one would almost sit down 
in despair of ever making head against such a 
torrent of combination and of example on the side 
of profligacy. Nor is this despair much alleviated, 
though some solitary case of repentance out of a 
hundred should now and then be off'ering itself to 
our contemplations ; and conscience should again 
lift its commanding voice within him, and be rein- 
stated in that authority which she had lost ; and 
he, breaking off his sins by righteousness, should by 
an act of simple and determined abandonment brave 
the mockery of all his associates, and betake himself 
to the paths of peace and of prayer ard of piety. 



324 MORAL INFLUENCE OF FIDELITY. 

Now, the all things of our text should lead an 
enlightened disciple to look for more evidence than 
this ; and should lead a decided convert to exhibit 
more evidence than this. The man who adorns 
the gospel in all things, will most certainly be and 
do all that we have heretofore insisted on. But 
we regret that it should be so much the impression 
of the world, and so much the impression even of 
our plausible and well-looking professors, that these 
form outward marks of such prominency as to throw 
all other outward marks into the shade ; and to 
draw an almost exclusive regard towards sobriety 
of manners, and sobriety of external observation, as 
forming the great and leading evidences of a now 
acquired Christianity. Now think, what prodigious 
effect it would give to the gospel, what an impressive 
testimony to its worth and excellence it would 
s])read around the walk of every professor of it — 
did all that was undeviating in truth, all that was 
generous in friendship, all that was manly in prin- 
ciple, all that was untainted in honour, all that was 
winning in gentleness, all that was endearing in the 
graces and virtues of domestic society, all that was 
beneficent in public life, and all that was amiable 
in the unnoticed recesses of private history — did all 
tiiese form into one beauteous corona of virtues 
and accomplishments, which might shed the lustre 
of Christianity over every field that is traversed by 
a professor of Christianity. The name of a convert 
is at all times most readily associated with sobriety 
and sabbath-keeping. We should like that the 
conduct of the professors were such as to establish 
a still wider association. And if it is not, it ia 



MORAL INFLUENCE OF FIDELITY. 325 

because professors haye so woefully neglected the 
principle of our text. It is because they have 
made their Christianity one thing, and their civil 
business another. It is because they have sepa- 
rated religion from humanity, and missed a truth of 
most obvious and most commanding evidence — that 
there is not so much as a single half hour in the 
whole current of a man's history, which the gospel 
might not cheer by its comforts, or guide by its 
rules, or enlighten by its informations and its prin- 
ciples. Had every professing convert proceeded 
upon this, the association would have gone much 
farther than it has actually done. It would have 
thrown a kind of universal emblazonment over the 
very name of Christianity. A man under the 
teaching of Jesus Christ could not be spoken of, 
without lighting up in the heart every feeling of 
confidence and affection and esteem. And only 
conceive how it would go to augment the power of 
this living and efficient testimony — did every man 
who plies his attendance upon church,and runs after 
sacraments, and whose element is to be hearing 
and talking of sermons, and the whole style of whose 
family regulation wears a complexion of sacredness 
— how it would tell with all the omnipotence of a 
charm upon the world, could we only have it to say 
of every such man — that the soul of honour and 
integrity animated all his doings — that his every 
word and his every bargain were immutable — that 
not so much as a flaw or the semblance of an im- 
peachment ever rested on any of his transactions 
— that if in business, you might repose upon him — 
that if in company, you had nothing to fear fi"om 



Il<6 MORAL INFLUENCE OF FIDELITY. 

his pride or his severity or his selfishness — that if 
in the relations oi neighbourhood, you might look for 
nothing from his hands but kindness and civility — 
that if in the officialities of puhlic employment, you 
might see all the faithfulness of a man who felt the 
weight of duty and responsibility that were attached 
to it — that if the head of a family, you might 
behold the happiest attemperament of wisdom and 
of gentleness — and finally, that if in service, you 
might commit to him the keepership of your all ; 
you might give your suspicions and your jealousies 
to the wind ; and, trusting to a fidelity which no 
opportunity can tempt, and no power of conceal- 
ment can make to swerve from the line of honesty, 
you might review the whole subject of his guar- 
dianship, and find how to its minutest particle that 
all was untouched and all was unviolated. 

This conducts us to the second lesson, which we 
proposed to draw from the clause of adorning the 
doctrine of God our Saviour in all things. And 
that is that it is in the power of men and women, ia 
the most obscure and unnoticed ranks of society, 
to do a thing of far greater magnificence and glory, 
than can be done by all the resources of a monarch, 
by all the commanding influence of wealth, by all 
the talents and the faculties of genius, by all the 
magic of utterance pouring forth its streams of elo- 
quent and persuasive reasoning, by all grandeur 
and all nobility and all official consequence when 
disjoined from Christian principle. Humble as ye 
are ye servants, there is a something ye can do 
which has all the greatness and all the effect of 
eternity stamped upon it. There is a something 



MORAL INFLUENCE OF FIDELITY. 327 

ye can do which the King of Glory may put down 
as done unto Him, and by which ye can both 
magnify the name and carry forward the interests of 
the Sun of Righteousness. There is a something 
ye can do by which ye may be admitted into the 
high honour of being fellow workers with God — by 
which He to whom all power is committed both in 
heaven and earth, will own you as the auxiliaries 
of His cause — by which ye may become the instru- 
ments of adding to the triumphs of the great 
Redeemer, and holding up His name to the world 
with the splendour of an augmented reputation. O 
think what a distinction the once-crucified but now 
exalted Saviour has conferred upon you. He has 
laid the burden of His honour and of His cause upon 
your shoulders. He has committed to you the task 
of adorning His doctrine. He has ennobled your 
every employment, by telling you that out of them 
all there may arise the moral lustre of such a prin- 
ciple and such a quality, as will reflect a credit 
upon Himself. And He who has done so much 
to exalt the station of a servant by taking the form 
of one on His own person, and by rendering under 
it such a service to Him who sitteth on the throne, 
as to have purchased for a sinful world all the 
securities and all the hopes and all the triumphs of 
their redemption, comes back upon you servants, 
now that he is exalted to the right hand of the 
most High, and tells you how much he looks to 
you for the glories of His interest and of His 
name — how much He rests upon you for the illus- 
tration and the honour of His doctrine in the world. 
And as it was the work of the Son of God, when 



S28 MORAL INFLUENCE OF FIDELITY. 

yeiled in the humiliation of a servant, which set oa 
foot the great plan of the world's restoration — so 
is it still to the work of servants, to you my 
humbler brethren, the glories of whose immortal 
nature lie buried only for a few little years under 
the meanness and the drudgeries of your daily 
employment — it is to you that He confides the 
helping forward of this mighty achievement, and 
the maintaining of its influence and of its glory from 
generation to generation. 

It is in His name that we address you. We 
tell you, ye men-servants and ye maid-servants, from 
the sincerity of a heart that is most thoroughly 
penetrated with the truth and the importance of 
what we are now uttering, that you can do more for 
Christ in your respective families than we can 
possibly accomplish. We know not who j'our 
masters and your mistresses are. But we know 
that there may be masters who scowl disdainfully 
on the business of the priesthood. We know that 
with the insolence of wealth, there may be some 
who despise the preaching of the cross, and make 
holiday of our sabbaths and our sacraments. We 
know that there may be some who come not here 
to have the doctrine of God our Saviour preached 
to them ; and therefore it is that we want you to 
do this business for us. You may do it in effect 
without the utterance of a single word on the sub- 
ject of Christianity. You may do it by the living 
power of your example. You may do it by the 
impressive exhibition of a fidelity which no tempta- 
tion can seduce, and no lure of gain can cause to 
swerve from the Une of a strict and undeviating 



MORAL INFLUENCE OF FIDELITY. 329 

integrity. You may do it by a lesson of greater 
energy than all that human argument can press, 
or the magic of human eloquence can insinuate. 
You may let them see in the whole of your history, 
that the man among all their dependents who is 
most devoted to the service of the sanctuary, is also 
the most devoted to the service of his employer ; 
and the most tender of all his interests ; and the 
most observant of all his will. You may preach 
them a daily sermon by the daily exhibition of your 
faithfulness, and your attachment, and that deep 
and duteous spirit of loyalty, which, with all the 
firm footing of a religious principle in your heart, 
leads you to be careful of all the trust he has com- 
mitted to you, and mindful of all his orders, and 
ever ready to meet his every wish and his every 
lawful imposition by the alacrity of your most 
assiduous and devoted ministrations. The king- 
dom of God is not in word but in power. And 
even though your master should listen to the 
every demonstration which issues from the pulpit, 
he may retire day after day with a charmed ear 
and an unawakened conscience, and the whole of 
the preacher's eloquence may die away from his 
memory like the sound of a pleasant song. But 
you keep by him through the week, and a grateful 
sense of your value is ever forcing itself upon hia 
convictions. And the inference that Christianity 
has a something of reality in its nature, may at 
times intrude itself among the multitude of his 
other thoughts and his other avocations. And his 
conscience may be arrested by the interesting 
visitation of such an idea. And that spirit whom 



MORAL INFLUENCE OF FIDELITY. 

we call you to pray for on his behalf, may reward 
your example and your supplications by pressing 
the idea home, and pursuing him with its resistless 
influence, and opening through its power such an 
avenue to his heart, as may at length carry before 
it the whole of his desires and of his purposes. And 
in like manner as Christianity found its way into 
the household of Cesar — so may you, my humbler 
brethren, find out a way for it into the houses of 
the wealthiest of our citizens ; and be the instru- 
ments of spreading it around among all those 
•villas of magnificence, which skirt and which adorn 
the city of our habitation ; and to you, clothed as 
ye are in the habiliments of servitude, and weighed 
down from morning to night by its drudgeries, and 
veiled as the greatness of your immortal aspirations 
is from the eye of the world — even upon you may 
this blessing in all its richness be realized, that as 
ye iiave turned men unto righteousness so shall ye 
shine as the stars for ever and ever. 

When we think of the lower orders of society, 
we cannot but think along with it, how high and 
how noble is the Gospel estimate of that importance 
whicli belongs to them. Each of them carries in 
his bosom a principle of deathless energy, never to 
be extinguished. Each of them has a career of 
ambition opened up, lofty as heaven and splendid 
as a crown of immortality. Eacli of them has an 
open way to Him who sitteth on the throne, throuffh 
the mediation of Him who sitteth on the right hand 
of it. To them belongs the memorable distinction 
conferred by this utterance of the Eternal Son — 
that unto the poor the Gospel is preached. Eacii of 



MORAL INFLUENCE OF FIDELITY. 331 

ttiem possesses a heart that may be regenerated by 
the influences of the Spirit ; and may be filled with 
all that is pure and all that is elevated in piety ; 
and may be turned into a residence for the finest 
and the loftiest emotions ; and that, under the power 
of an evangelical culture, may be made to exemplify 
all that is respectable in worth, and all that is 
endearing in the nobler graces of Christianity. 
When worth and greatness meet in one imposing 
combination, there is a something in a spectacle so 
rare which draws the general eye of admiration 
along with it. But to the moral taste of some, 
and we profess ourselves to be of that number — 
there is a something still more touching, still more 
attractive, still more fitted to draw the eye of phil- 
anthropy and to fill it with the images of beauty 
and peacefulness, in what we should call the virtues 
and the respectabilities of humble life — as a pious 
father, in the midst of a revering family — or the 
duteous offspring who rise around him, and are 
taught by his example to keep the Sabbaths of the 
Lord and to love His ordinances — or the well- 
ordered household, the members of which are 
trained to all the decencies of Christian conduct — 
or the frail and lowlj tenement, where the voice of 
psalms is heard with the return of every evening, 
and the morning of the hallowe-d day collects all 
its inmates around the altar of domestic prayer. 
When such pictures as these occur in humble life, 
and sure we are that humble life is capable of 
affording them, who could think of withholding 
ft-om them his testimony of readiest admiration? 
The roan who, without any superiority of wealth 



332 MORAL INFLUENCE OF FIDELITY. 

whatever, has, by the pure force of character, 
gained a moral ascendency over the population of 
his obscure neighbourhood, causes all earthly dis- 
tinctions to vanish into insignificance before him. 
Now we affirm that in the very poorest and moat 
unnoticed walks of society, such men are to be 
found ; that by the powerful application of Chris- 
tian motives such men may be multiplied ; that 
there exist throughout the wide mass of society all 
the imaginable capabilities of worth and excellence 
and principle and piety ; that on the spacious field 
of a mighty harvest which is on every side of us, 
there may be raised a wliole multitude of converts 
in whose hearts the principle of the Gospel shall 
have taken up its firm possession, and over the 
visible path of whose liistory the power of the 
Gospel may shed the lustre of some of the best 
and finest accomplishments by which our nature can 
be adorned. 

We must not however pursue this speculation 
any farther. It is in the power of the servants 
who now hear us, to turn it into a reality. We 
look to them for the vindication of all we have 
uttered ; and sure we are, that a faithful and an 
attached servant; one who would maintain unse- 
duced integrity, in the midst of manifold tempta- 
tions ; on whom the struggling force of principle 
would achieve a victory over the lure of every op- 
portunity, and the certainty of every concealment ; 
who, nobly superior to all that is sordid and sneak- 
h)g and artful, would protect his master's interest 
as his own, and disdain to touch a single farthing 
of what was committed to him — why, we should 



MORAL INFLUENCE OF FIDELITY. 333 

flever think of the rank 6f such a man— we should 
call him the champion of his order, and feel how 
honourably he had represented his own class of 
society — how he had asserted all their honours, and 
shown how elevation of soul and of sentiment be- 
longed as essentially to them as to the wealthiest 
and most distinguished of the land — how he had 
evinced the wondrous capabilities of principle and 
of improvement wliich had existed over the wide 
mass of the population. And, taking him as a 
specimen, that tlie whole face of the community 
might be turned into a moral garden ; and thatj 
in point of moral and spiritual importance, the 
poor, the despised, the unnoticed, the neglected 
poor, are to the full equal with all that was most 
loftv in the rank, and all that was most splendid in 
the literature of society. 

We dismiss you, my friends, with the remark- 
that this is no speculation of ours. It is the call 
of the Saviour who died for you. It is He who, 
novi' that he has achieved your redemption, conde- 
scends to ask a favour of you. He commits to you 
the adornment of his doctrine in the eyes of the 
world. And remember that when you leave this 
church, and betake yourselves to the familiarities 
of your daily employment, though our eye cannot 
follow you, the eye of your Master in heaven is 
never away from you. He takes an interest in all 
vour doings. He registers the every hour and 
performance of your history. If you suffer not 
this reflection to tell upon your conduct from this 
moment, you are throwing the gauntlet of defiance 
to a beseeching and a commanding Saviour But 



334 MORAL INFLUENCE OF FIDELITY. 

if otherwise, He will not despise the humble offer* 
ing of your obedience. He will put it down as 
done unto Him. He will recognise you as fellow- 
helpers to his cause and to his interest in the 
world. He will accept of your prayers, because 
they are the prayers of them whose hands are clean 
and whose hearts are purged from their regard to 
ail iniquity. You will grow in friendly and fami- 
liar intercourse with the great Mediator ; and He 
will put down the very smallest items of your 
obedience as fruits of the love that you bear Him, 
and of the faith which wovketh by lo^e and which 
keepeth the commandments. 



IMPORTANCE OF CIVIL GOVEIlNMEiiT. 335 



DISCOURSE XV. 

THE IMPORTANCE OF CIVIL GOVERNMENT 
TO SOCIETY. 



'* What then ? are we better than they ? No, in no wise : for we 
have before proved both Jews and Gentiles, that they are all 
under sin ; As it is written. There is none righteous, no, not 
one : There is none that understandeth, there is none that 
seeketh after God. They are all gone out of the way, they 
are together become unprofitable ; there is none that doeth 
good, no, not one. Their throat is an open sepulchre ; with 
their tongues they have used deceit ; the poison of asps is under 
their lips : Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness ; 
Their feet are swift to shed blood : Destruction and misery 
are in their ways : And the way of peace have they not known : 
There is no fear of God before their eyes. Now we know, 
that what things soever the law saith, it saith to them who are 
under the law ; that every mouth may be stopped, and all the 
world may become guilty before God." — Romans iii. 9 — 19, 

There are certain of these charges which can be 
brought more simply and speedily home in the way 
of conviction than certain others of them. Those 
which bring man more directly before the tribunal 
of God, can be made out more easily than those 
which bring him before the tribunal of his fellows. 
It were difficult to prove, that, in reference to man, 
there are not some of the species who have not 
something to glory of; but it should not be so dif- 
ficult to prove, that we have nothing to glory of 
Defore God. Now, the conclusion of tiie Apostle's 
argument in this passage is, that it is before God 



331> IMPORTANCE OF CIVIL GOVERNMENT. 

that all the world is guilty ; and if we, in the first 
instance, single out those verses which place man 
before us in his simple relationship to the God who 
formed him, we ought not to find it a hard mattei 
to carry the acquiescence of our hearers in the sen- 
tence which is here pronounced upon our guilty 
species. 

One of those verses is, that "there is none 
righteous, no, not one." To be held as having 
righteously kept the law of our country, we mus 
keep the whole of it. It is not necessary that we 
accumulate upon our persons the guilt of treason, 
and forgery, and murder, and violent depredation, 
ere we forfeit our lives to an outraged government. 
By one of these acts we incur just as dreadful and 
as entire a forfeiture as though guilty of them all. 
The hundred deeds of obedience will not efface or 
expiate the one of disobedience ; and we have 
only to plead for the same justice to a divine that 
we render to a human adminisl ration, in order to 
convince every individual who now hears us, con- 
scious, as he must be, of one, and several, and 
many acts of transgression against the law of God, 
that there is not one of them who is rigiiteous 
before him. 

" There is none that understandeth, there is 
none that seeketh after God," is another of these 
verses. We will venture to say of every man, 
without exception, who has not submitted himself 
to the great doctrine of this epistle, which is justi- 
fication by faith, that there is not one principle 
clearly intelligible even to his own mind, on which 
he "ests his acceptance with the God whom he baa 



IMPORTANCE OF CIVIL GOVERNMENT. 33} 

offended. He may have some obscure conception 
of His mercy, but he has never struck the compro- 
mise between His mercy and His justice. Ho 
has never braved the inquiry, how is it possible 
that a sinner can be pardoned without a dissohition 
of God's moral government ? If he has ever taken 
up the question, " What shall I do to be saved ?" 
he has never, in the prosecution of it, looked steadily 
in the face at the Truth and Holiness of the God- 
head. He has never extricated his condition as a 
sinner, from the dilemma of God's conflicting 
attributes ; or apprehended, to his own satisfaction, 
how it is that the dignity of Heaven's throne can 
be upheld, amid the approaches of the polluted, 
who dare the inspection of eternal purity, and offer 
to come nigh, on the single presumption of God's 
connivance at sin, — and a connivance founded too 
on the vague impression of God's simple, and easy, 
and unresisting tenderness. What becomes of all 
that which stamps authority upon a law, and props 
the majesty of a Lawgiver, is a question that they 
have not resolved ; and that just because it is a 
question which they do not entertain. They are 
not seeking to resolve it. That matter which 
appertains to the very essence of a sinner's salva- 
tion, is a matter of which they have no under- 
standing ; and they do not care to understand it. 
They are otherwise taken up, and giving themselves 
no uneasiness upon the subject. They, all their 
lives long, are blinking, and evading the questions 
which lie at the very turning point of that transition 
by which a sinner passes from a state of wrath into 
a state of acceptance. They hold the whole of this 

VOL. VI. P 



338 IMPORTANCE OF CIVIL GOVERNMBNT. 

matter in abeyance ; and the things of the world 
engross, and interest, and occupy, their whole 
hearts, to the utter exchision of Him who made the 
world. They are seeking after many things, but 
they are not seeking after God — If you think that 
this is bearing too hard upon you, tell us what have 
been the times, and what the occasions, on which you 
have ever made the finding of God the distinct and 
the business object of your endeavours ? When did 
you ever seek Him truly ? When did your efforts 
in this way ever go beyond the spirit and the 
character of an empty round of observations ? 
What are the strenuous attempts you ever made 
to push the barrier which intercepts the guilty from 
the God whom they have rebelled against ? If 
you are really and heartily seeking, you will find ; 
but, without the fear of refutation, do we affirm of 
all here present who have not reached the Saviour, 
and are not in their way to Him, that none of 
you understandeth, and none of you seeketh after 
God. 

" They are all gone out of the way, they are 
together become unprofitable, there is none that 
doeth good; no, not one," — is another of these 
verses. We do not say of the people whom we 
are now addressing, that they have gone out of the 
way of honour, or out of the way of equity, or out 
of the way of fair, and pleasant, and companionable 
neighbourhood. But they, one and all of them, 
are out of the way of godliness. When the 
Prophet complains of our species, he does not 
affirm of them tliat they had turned every one to 
a way either of injustice or cruelty ; but he counts 



IMPORTANCE OK CIVIL GOVERNMENT. «3S> 

It condemnation enough, that they had turned every 
one to his own way. It is iniquity enough in his 
eyes that the way in which we walk is our own 
way, and not God's; that in the prosecution of it 
we are simply pleasing ourselves, and not asking 
or caring whether it be a way that is pleasing to 
Him ; that the impelling principle of what we do 
is our own will, and not His authority ; that the 
way in which we walk is a way of independence 
upon God, if not of iniquity against our fellows in 
society; that it is the way of one who walks in the 
sight of his own eyes, and not of one who walks 
under the sight and in the service of another; 
that God, in fact, is as good as cast off from us ; 
and we say what is tantamount to this, that we 
will not have Him to reign over us. This is the 
universal habit of Nature; and if so, Nature is out 
of the way, and the world at large offers a monstrous 
exception to the habit of the sinless and unfallen, 
where all from the highest to the lowest, walk in 
that rightful subordination which the thing that is 
formed should ever have towards Him who formed 
it. It is this which renders all the works of mere 
natural men so unprofitable, that is, of no value in 
the high count and reckoning of eternity. They 
want the great moral infusion which makes them 
valuable. There is nothing of God in them ; having 
neither His will for their principle, nor the advance- 
ment of any one cause which His heart is set upon 
for their object. They may serve a temporary 
purpose. They may shed a blessing over the 
ccenery of our mortal existence. They may mi- 
nister to the good, and the peace, and the protec- 



340 IMPORTANCE OF CIVIL GOVERNMENT. 

tion of society. They may add to the sunshine or 
the serenity of our little day upon earth ; and yet 
be unprofitable, because they yield no fruit unto 
immortality. Destitute as they all are of godliness, 
they are destitute of goodness. They have not 
the essential spirit of this attribute pervading them. 
And though many there are to whom the preach- 
ing of the cross is foolishness, and who have reached a 
lofty estimation in the walks of integrity and honour, 
and even of philanthropy and patriotism, yet, with 
the taint of earthliness which vitiates all they do, 
in the estimation of Heaven's Sanctuary there is 
none of them that doeth good ; no, not one. 

We now pass onward to another set of charges, 
which it may not be so easy to substantiate on the 
ground of actual observation. 'I'hey consist of 
highly atrocious offences against the peace and the 
dearest interests of society. It is true, that the 
apostle here drops the st} le of universality which 
he so firndy sustains in the foregoing part of his 
arraignment, when he speaks of all behig out of the 
way ; and of none, no, not one, being to be found 
on the path of godliness. And it is further true, 
that, in the subsequent prosecution of his charges, 
he quotes several expressions which David made 
use of, not against the whole species, but against 
his own enemies. But yet it will be found, that 
though the picture of atrocity here drawn may 
not in our day be so broadly exhibited as in the 
ruder and more barbarous periods of this world's 
history, yet, that the principles of it are still busily 
at w ork ; that though humanity be altered a little 
in its guise, it is not, apart from the gospel, at all 



IMPORTANCK OF CIVIL GOVERNMENT. . tl 

altered in its substance ; that though softened down 
into a somewhat milder complexion, its fiercer ele- 
ments are not thei efore extinguished, but only lie 
for a time in a sort of slumbering concealment ; 
that though law and civilization, and a more en- 
lightened sense of interest, may have stopped the 
mouth of many a desolating volcano, which would 
else have marred and wasted the face of society, 
yet do the fiery materials still exist in the bosom of 
society. It is religion alone which will kill the 
elementally principles of human wickedness, and 
every expedient short of religion will do no more 
than restrain the ebullition of them. So that, dark 
as the scriptural representation of our nature is ; and 
though here personified by the Apostle into a mon- 
ster, whose delight is in the most foul and revolting 
abominations; with a throat like an open sepulchre, 
emitting contempt, and hatred, and envy, and every 
thing off'ensive ; and a tongue practised in the arts 
of deceitfulness ; and lips from which the gall of ma- 
lignity ever drops in unceasing distillation ; and a 
mouth full of venomous asperity ; and feet that run 
to assassination as a game; and wdth the pathway on 
which she runs marked by the ruin and distress that 
attend upon her progress ; and with a disdainful 
aversion in her heart to the safety and inglorious- 
ness of peace ; and, finally, with an aspect of defi- 
ance to the God that called her into being, and 
gave all her parts and all her energies — though this 
sketch of our nature w^as originally taken by the 
Psalmist from the prowling banditti that hovered 
on the confines of Judea, yet has the Apostle, by ad- 
mitting it into his argument, stamped a perpcruity 



342 IMPORTANCE OF CIVlL GOVERNMENT. 

upon it, and made it universal, — givino- us to un- 
derstand, that if such was the ciiaracter of rnan, as it 
stood nakedly out among the rude and resentful 
hostilities of a barbarous people, such also is the 
real character of man among the glosses, and the 
regularities, and the monotonous decencies of mo- 
dern society. 

There is one short illustration whieh may help 
you to comprehend this. You know that oatha 
were more frequent at one time than they are now 
in the conversation of the higher classes, and that 
at present it is altogether a point of politeness to 
abstain from the utterance of them. It is a point 
of politeness, we fear, more than a point of piety. 
There may be less of profaneness in their mouths, 
while there may be as much as ever in their hearts; 
and when the question is between God and man, and 
with a view to rate the godliness of the latter, do 
you think that this is at all alleviated by a mere 
revolution of taste about the proprieties of fashiona- 
ble intercourse ? There may be as little of religion 
in the discontinuance of swearing, when that is 
brought about by a mere fluctuation in the mode 
or bon ton of society, as there is of religion in the 
adoption of a new dress, or a new style of enter- 
tainment. And, in like manner, murder in the 
act may be less frequent now, while, if he who 
hateth his brother be a murderer, it may be fully 
as foul and frequent in the principle ; and theft, in 
the shape of violent and open depredation, be no 
longer practised by him wtio gives vent to an equal 
degree of dishonesty through the chicaneries of 
merchandise ; and that malice which wont in othe" 



IMPORTANCE OF CIVIL GOVERNMENT. 343 

times to pour itself forth in resentful outcry, or 
vulgar execration, may now find its sweet and se- 
cret gratification in the conquests of a refined po- 
licy ; and thus may there lurk under the soft and 
placid disguises of well-bred citizenship, just as 
much of unfeeling deceit, and unfeeling cruelty, as 
were ever realized in the fiercer contests of savage 
warfare, so as to verify the estimate of our apostle, 
even when applied to the character of society in 
modern days, and to make it as evident with the 
duties of the second table as it is with the first, that 
in every thing man has wandered far from the path 
of rectitude, and in every thing has fallen short of 
the glory of God. 

The truth is, there is much in the whole guise of 
modern society that is fitted to hide from human 
eyes the real deformity of the human character. We 
think that, apart from Christianity, the falsehood 
and the ferocity of our species are essentially the 
same with what they were in the most unsettled 
periods of its history — that, however moulded into 
a different form, they retain all the strength and 
substance that they ever had — and that, if certain 
restraints were lifted away, certain regulations vv'hich 
have their hold not upon the principle, but upon 
the selfishness of our nature ; then would the latent 
pi:opensities of man again break forth into open 
exhibition, and betray him to be the same guileful, 
and rapacious, and vindictive creature he has ever 
shown himself to be, in those places of the earth 
where government had not yet introduced its re- 
straints, and civilization had not yet introduced itsi 
disguises. 



344 IMPORTANCE OF CIVIL GOVERNMENT. 

And even when society has sat down into the 
form of a peaceful and well-ordered commonwealth, 
will it be seen that the evil of the human heart, 
though it come not forth so broadly and so outrage- 
ously as before, is just as active in its woiknigs, and 
just as unsubdued in its principle as ever. We ap- 
prehend that man to be mainly ignorant of life, and 
to be unpractised or untaught among the collisions 
of human intercourse, who is not aware that even 
among our politest circles, smoothed as they may 
be into perfect decorum, and graced by the smile of 
soft and sentimental courtesy, there may lurk all 
the asperities and heart-burnings so honestly set 
forth by our Apostle ; and that even there the artful 
malignity of human passion finds, in slanderous in- 
sinuations, and the devices of a keen and dexterous 
rivalry, its effectual vent for them. And little 
has he experienced of the trick and treachery of 
business, who thinks that, in the scramble of its 
eager competitions, less deceit is now used with the 
tongue, than in the days when the Psalmist was 
compassed round with the snares of his adversaries. 
And slightely has he reflected on the true character, 
that often beams out from beneath the specious fal- 
lacy which lies over it, who does not perceive that 
there may, even with law, be as determined a spirit 
of injustice, among the frauds and the forms of bank- 
ruptcy, as that which in tho olden time, and without 
law, carried violence and rapine into a neighbour's 
habitation. And there is a lack of insight with him 
who thinks, that in civilized war, with all its gallant 
courtesies, and all its manifestos of humane and 
righteous protestation, there may not be the same 



IMPORTANCE OF CIVIL GOVERNMENT. 345 

kindling for the fray, and the same appetite for blood, 
that gives its fell and revengefid sweep to the toma< 
hawk of Indians. There is another dress and anothei 
exterior upon society than before ; but be assured, 
that in so far as it respects the essentials of human 
character the representation of the Apostle is still 
the true one. Whatever were the deceitful, or 
whatever were the murderous propensities of man, 
three thousand years ago, they have descended to our 
present generation ; and we are not sure but that, 
through the regular vents of war, and of bank- 
ruptcy, there is as full scope for their indulgence as 
ever. There may be a change in the mode of these 
iniquities, without any change at all in the matter 
of them ; and after all that police, and refinement, 
and the kindly operation of long pacific intercourse, 
have done to humanize the aspect of these latter days, 
we are far from sure whether upon the displacement 
of certain guai'ds and barriers of security, the slum- 
bering ferocities of man might not again announce 
their existence, and break out, as before, into open 
and declared violence. 

All this, while it gives a most humiliating esti- 
mate of our species, should serve to enhance to our 
minds the blessings of regular Government. And 
it were curious to question the agents of police upon 
this subject, the men who are stationed at the place 
of combat and of guardianship, with those who 
have cast off the fear of God, and cast off' also the 
fear of man to such a degree, as to be ever ventur- 
ing across the margin of human legality. Let the 
most observant of all these public functionaries 
eimply depone to the effect it would have, even 
p2 



346 IMPORTANCE OF CIVIL GOVERNMENT. 

upon GUI' mild and modern society, were this guar* 
dianship dissolved. Would it not be evident to 
him, and is it not equally evident to you all, that 
the artificial gloss which now overspreads the face 
of it would speedily be dissipated; and that, under- 
neath, would the character of man be sure to stand 
out in far nearer resemblance to that sketch, how- 
ever repulsive, which the inspired writer has here 
offered of our species ? Were anarchy the order 
of our day, and the lawless propensities of man per- 
mitted to stalk abroad in this the season of their 
wild emancipation ; were all the restraints of order 
driven in, and human strength and human fierce- 
ness were to ride in triumph over the prostrate au- 
thorities of the land; were the reigning will of our 
country, at this moment, the will of a spontaneous 
multitude, doing every man of them, in rude and 
random ebullitions, what was right in his own eyes ; 
with just such a fear of our heavenly superior as 
now exists in the world, but with all fear and reve- 
rence for earthly superiors taken away from it; let 
us just ask you to conceive the effect of such a state 
of things, and then to compute how little there is of 
moral, and how much there is of mere animal restraint 
in the apparent virtues of human society. There 
is a twofold benefit in such a contemplation. It 
will enhance to every Christian mind the cause of 
loyalty, and lead him to regard the power that is, 
as the minister of God to him for good And it will 
also guide him through many delusions to appreciate 
justly the character of man ; to distinguish aright 
between the semblance of principle and its reality ; 
and to gather, from the surveys of experience, • 



IMPORTANCE OF CIVIL GOVERNMENT. 34? 

fresh evidence for the truth of those Scriptures, 
U'hich speak so truly of human sinfulness, and poinj 
out so clearly the way of human salvation. 

But it is not necessary, for the purpose of identi- 
fying the character of man, as it now is, with what 
the character of man was, in its worst features, in 
the days of the Royal Psalmist, to make out by 
evidence a positive thirst after blood on the part of 
any existing class in society. We are not sure 
that it was any native or abstract delight in cruelty 
which prompted the marauders of other days to 
deeds of violence. Place a man in circumstances 
of ease and of self-complacency, and he will revolt 
from the infliction of unnecessary pain, just as the 
gorged and satiated animal of prey will suffer the 
traveller to pass without molestation. It forms no 
part of our indictment against the species, that his 
appetite for blood urges him onwards to barbarity, 
but that his appetite for other things will urge him 
on to it ; and that if, while he had these things, he 
would rather abstain from the death of his fellow- 
men, yet, rather than want these things, he would 
inflict it. It is not that his love of cruelty is the 
originating appetite which carries him forward to 
deeds of cruelty; but that his abhorrence of cruelty 
is not enough to arrest the force of other appetites, 
when they find that human life lies in the way of 
their gratification. The feet of the borderers of 
Judea made haste to shed blood ; but, just because, 
like the borderers of our own land, their love of 
booty could only be indulged with human resist.-'f :ce 
among human habitations. And were these -ays 
of public licentiousness again to return— »=ere 



348 IMPORTANCE OF CIVIL GOVERNMENT. 

the functions of government suspended, and the only 
guarantee of peace and of property were the native 
rectitude of the species — did the power of anarchy 
achieve its own darling object of a jubilee all over 
the country for human wilfulness ; and in this way 
were, not the past inclinations revived, but just the 
present inclinations of man let loose upon society — 
a singlemonth would not elapse, ere scenes of as dread 
atrocity were witnessed, as those which the Psalmist 
has recorded, and those which the Apostle has 
transmitted, as the exemplars, not of practical, but 
of general humanity. The latent iniquities of the 
human heart would reappear just as soon as the 
compression of human authority was lifted away 
from them ; and these streets be made to flow with 
the blood of the most distinguished of our citizens; 
and the violence at first directed against the summit 
of society, would speedily cause the whole frame 
of it to totter into dissolution ; and in this our 
moral and enlightened day it would be found, that 
there was enough of crime in the country to spread 
terror over all its provinces, and to hold its prostrate 
families in bondage; and with such a dreary inter- 
regnum of tumult, and uproar, aud vagrancy, as 
this, would there be a page of British history as 
deeply crimsoned over, as are the darkest annals 
of the barbarity of our species — all proving, how 
indispensable the ordinance of human government 
is to the well-being of society ; but also proving, 
that if it be the will, and the inward tendency, and 
the unfettered principle, which constitute the real 
elements of the character of man, this character 
has only been coloured into another hue, without 



IMPORTANCE OF CIVIL GOVERNMENT. 349 

being transformed into another essence, by an 
ordinance which can only keep its elements in check, 
but never can extinguish them. 

And on applying the spiritual touchstone of the 
gospel, may we perhaps fasten a similar charge on 
many in society, who never suspected it possible 
that they had any part in the Apostle's dark repre* 
sentation of our foul and fallen nature. Even in tha 
wildest scenes of anarchy, it may not be the love ol 
cruelty, but the love of power or of plunder, which 
leads men to the most revolting abominations 
of cruelty. It-is not so much a ravenous desire 
after human blood, as a regardlessness about it, 
which stamps a savage barbarity on the characters 
of men. It is their regard for the objects of avarice 
and ambition, coupled with their regardlessness 
about the quantity of human life, that lies in ttie 
way of them ; which is enough to account for deeds 
of atrocity as monstrous as ever were committed, 
either by bloody tyrants, or ferocious multitudes. 
Now, may not this regard on the one hand, and 
this regardlessness on the other, be fully exemplified 
by him who looks with delight on the splendid 
reversion that awaits him, and cares not how soon 
the death of his aged relative may bring it to his 
door ? And may it not be exemplified by him who, 
all in a tumult with military glee, and the visions of 
military glory, longs for some arena crowded with 
the fellows of his own sentient nature, on which he 
might bring the fell implements of destruction 
to bear, and so signalize himself in the proud lists 
of chivalry or patriotism ? And most striking of all, 
perhaps, may it not be exemplified, by the most 



350 IMPORTANCE OF CIVIL GOVERNMENT. 

gentle and pacific of our citizens, who, engrossed 
with the single appetite of fear, and under the 
movements of no other regard than a regard to his 
own security, might Usten with secret satisfaction to 
the tale of the many hundreds of the rebellious who 
had fallen — and how the sweep of fatal artillery, oi 
the charge of victorious squadrons, told with deadly 
execution on the flying multitude? We are not com- 
paring the merits of the cause of order, which are 
all triumphant, with those of anarchy; the inscribed 
ensigns of which are as hateful to every Christian 
eye, as ever to the Jews of old was the abomination 
of desolation spoken of by Daniel the Prophet. 
We are merely expounding the generalities of a 
nature, trenched upon every side of it in deceitful- 
ness ; and where, under the gloss of many plausi- 
bilities, there lurk, unsuspected and unknown, all 
the rudiments of depravity ; and through the 
intricacies of which, he who saw with the eye of 
inspiration could detect a permanent and universal 
taint, both of selfishness and of practical atheism. 
The picture that he has drawn will bear to be 
confronted with the humanity of modern, as well as 
of ancient days ; and, though taken off at first from 
the ;uder specimens of our kind, yet, on a narrow 
inspection, will it be found to be substantiated among 
the dehcate phases of our more elegant and artificial 
society ; so as that every mouth should be stopped, 
and the whole world be brought in guilty before 
God. 

In looking to the present aspect of society, it \s 
not easy so to manage our argument as to reach 
conviction among all, that all are guilty before God 



IMPORTANCE OF CIVIL GOVERNMENT. 351 

aiTid that, unknowing of it themselves, there may be 
the lurking principles of what is dire in human 
atrocity, even under the blandest exhibitions of our 
familiar and every-day acquaintanceship. But, 
as there are degrees of guilt, and as these are more 
or less evident to human eyes, it would, perhaps, 
decide the identity of our present generation, with 
those of a rude and savage antiquity, could we 
run along the scale of actual wickedness that is 
before us, and fasten upon an exemplification of it 
so plainly and obviously detestable as to vie with 
all that is recorded of the villany of our species in 
former ages of the world. And such a one has 
occurred so recently, that there is not one here 
present who, upon the slightest allusion, will not 
instantly recognise it. We speak not of those who 
have openly spoken, and that beyond the margin of 
legality, against the government of our land. We 
speak not of those who have clamoured so loudly, 
and lifted so open a front of hostility to the laws, 
as to have brought down upon them the hand of 
public vengeance. We speak not even of those 
who, steeled to the purposes of blood, went forth to 
kill and to destroy, and, found with the implements 
of violence in their hands, are now awaiting the 
sentence of an earthly tribunal on the enormity into 
which they have fallen. But we speak to our men 
of deeper contrivance ; to those wary and unseen 
counsellors who have so coolly conducted others 
to the brunt of a full exposure, and then retired 
80 cautiously within the shelter of their own cow- 
ardice ; those men of print and of plot, and of pri- 
vacy, in whose hands the other agents of rebellion 



352 IMPORTANCE OF CIVIL GOVERNMENT. 

were nothing better than slaves and simpletons ; 
tliose men of skill enough for themselves, to go 
thus far, and no farther, and of cruelty enough 
for others, as to care not how many they impelled 
across the verge of desperation ; those men who 
have made their own harvest of the passions of the 
multitude, and now skulk in their hiding places, till 
the storm of vengeance that is to sweep the victims 
of their treachery from the laud of the living shall 
have finally blown away ; those men who spoke a 
patriotism which they never felt, and shed their 
serpent tears over sufferings which never drew 
from their bosoms one sigh of honest tenderness. 
Tell us, if, out of the men who thus have trafficked 
in delusion, and, in pursuance of their unfeeluig 
experiment, have entailed want and widowhood 
upon families, there may not as dark a picture of 
humanity be drawn as the Psalmist drew out of the 
rude materials that were around him : And, after 
all that civilization has done for our species, and 
all that smoothness of external aspect into which 
government has moulded the form of society ; is it 
not evident, that upon the slightest relaxation of its 
authority, and the faintest prospect of its dissolution 
and overthrow, there is lying in reserve as much 
of untamed and ruthless ferocity in our land, as, if 
permitted to come forth, would lift an arm of bloody 
violence, and scatter all the cruelties of the reign 
of terror among its habitations ? * 

These are rather lengthened illustrations in which 
we have indulged ; but who can resist the tempta- 

" This Sermon was preached iu 1820, after the suppression of j 
nbeiiious movement in Scotland. 



IMPORTANCE OF CIVIL GOVERNMENT. 353 

tioii that offers itself, when an opening is given for 
exhibiting the accordancY that obtains between the 
truths of observation, and the averments of scripture ; 
when facts are before us, and such a use of them 
can be made, as that of turning them into materials 
by which to strengthen the foundations of orthodoxy; 
and when, out of scenes which rise with all the 
freshness of recency before us, it can be shown how 
the sturdy apostolic doctrine will bear to be con- 
fronted with every new display, and every new 
development of human experience ? And. ere we 
have done, we should like to urge three lessons 
upon you, from all that has been said ; the first 
with a view to set your theology upon its right 
basis ; and the second with a view to set your 
loyalty upon its right basis ; and the third with a 
view to impress a right practical movement on 
those who hold a natural or political ascendancy 
in our land. 

I. First, then, as to the theology of this question. 
We trust you perceive how much it is, and how 
little it is, that can be gathered from the compara- 
tive peace and gentleness of modern society ; how 
much the protection of families is due to the 
physical restraints that are laid on by this world's 
government, and how little is due to the moral 
restraints that are laid on by the unseen government 
of Heaven ; how little the existing safety of our 
commonwealth, both from crime and turbulence, is 
owing to the force of any considerations which are 
addressed to the principle of man, and how much 
of it is owing to the force of such considerations 
as are addressed fo man's fears and man's selfish- 



ZL4. IMPORTANCE OF CIVIL GOVERNMENT. 

ness ; — all proving, that if human nature, in this 
our age, do not break forth so frequently and so 
outrageously into violence as in other ages that have 
gone by, it is only because it is shackled, and not 
because it is tamed. It is more like the tractable- 
ness of an animal led about by a chain, than of an 
animal inwardly softened into a dociUty and a 
mildness which did not formerly belong to it. It 
is due, without doubt, to the influence of a very 
strong and very salutary counteraction ; but it is 
a counteraction that has been formed out of the 
interest of man. and not out of the fear of God. It 
is due, not to the working of that celestial machinery 
which bears on the spiritual part of our constitution, 
but to the working of another machinery most 
useful for the temporary purpose which it serves, 
yet only bearing on the material and worldly part 
of our constitution. On this point, observation 
and orthodoxy are at one; and one of the most 
convincing illustrations which the Apostie can 
derive to his own doctrine, may be taken from 
the testimony of those who, in the shape of legal 
functionaries, are ranged along that line of defence, 
over which Immanity, with its numerous outbreak 
ings of fraud, and rapacity, and violence, is ever 
passing. Let them simply aver, on their own 
experimental feeling, what the result would be, if 
all the earthly safeguards of law and of government 
were driven away from the rampart at which they 
are stationed; and they are just preaching orthodoxy 
to our ears, and lending us their authority to one 
of its articles, when they tell us, that upon such 
lUk event the whole system of social life would go 



IMPORTANCE OF C'VIL GOVEUNMENT. 355 

into unhingement, and that, in tne wild uproar of 
human passions which would follow, kindness, and 
confidence, and equity, would take their rapid 
flight from human habitations. 

II. But, secondly, the very same train of argu- 
ment which goes to enlighten the theology of this 
subject, serves also to deepen and to establish 
within us all the prmciples of a most devoted 
loyalty. That view of the human character, upon 
which it is contended, by the divine, that unless it 
is regenerated there can be no meetness for heaven, 
is the very same with that view of the human 
character upon which it is contended, by the 
politician, that unless it is restrained there will be 
no safety from crime and violence along the course 
of the pilgrimage which leads to it. An enlightened 
Christian recognises the hand of God in all the 
shelter that is thrown over him from the fury of 
the natural elements ; and he equally recognises 
it in all the shelter that is thrown over him from 
the fury of the moral elements by which he is 
surrounded. Had he a more favourable view of 
our nature, he might not look on government as 
so indispensable ; but, with the view that he 
actually has, he cannot miss the conclusion of its 
being the ordinance of Heaven for the church's 
good upon earth ; and that thus a canopy of defence 
is drawn over the heads of Zion's travellers; and 
they rejoice in the authority of human laws as an 
instrument in the hand of God for the peace of 
their Sabbaths, and the peace of their sacraments ; 
and they deprecate the anarchy that would ensue 
from the suspension of them, with as much honest 



356 rMPORTANCE OF CIVIL GOVERN'VfENT. 

principle, as they would deprecate the earthquake 
that might ingulf, or the hurricane that might 
sweep away their habitations ; and, aware of what 
humanity is, when left to itself, they accept, as a 
Voon from heaven, the mechanism which checks 
the effervescence of all those fires that would else 
go forth to burn up and to destroy. 

This, at all times the feeling of every enlight- 
ened Christian, must have been eminently and 
peculiarly so at that time when our recent alarms 
were at the greatest height. It was the time of 
our sacrament ; and, to all who love its services, 
must it have been matter of grateful rejoicing, that, 
by the favour of Him who sways the elements of 
Nature, and the as uncontrollable elements of 
human society, we were permitted to finish these 
services in peace ; that, in that feast of love and 
good-will, we were not rudely assailed by the din 
of warlike preparation ; that, ere sabbath came, 
the tempest of alarm, which had sounded so fearfully 
along the streets of our city, was hushed into the 
quietness of sabbath ; so tliat, like as if in the 
midst of sweetest landscape, and amongst a congre- 
gation gathered out of still and solitary hamlets, 
and with nothing to break in upon the deep repose 
and tranquiUity of the scene, save the voice of 
united praise, from an assembly of devout and 
revering worshippers, were we, under the protection 
of an arm stronger than any arm of flesh, and at 
the bidding of a voice more powerful than that of 
mighty conquerors, suffered to enjoy the pure and 
peaceful ordinances of our faith, with all the threats 



IMPORTANCE OF CIVIL GOVEKNMENT. 35" 

and all the outcries of human violence kept far 
away from us. 

It was the apprehension of many, that it might 
have been otherwise. And, what ought to be their 
enduring gratitude, when, instead of the wrath of 
man let loose upon our families; and a devoted city 
given up to the frenzy and the fierceness of a mis- 
guided population ; and the maddening outcry of 
combatants plying against each other their instru- 
ments of destruction; and the speed of flying 
multitudes, when the noise of the footmen and the 
noise of the horsemen gave dreadful intimation of 
the coming slaughter ; and the bursting conflagra- 
tion, in various quarters, marking out where the 
fell emissaries of ruin were at work; and the 
sliock, and the volley, and the agonies of dying 
men, telling the trembling inmates of every house- 
hold, that the work of desperation had now begun 
upon the streets, and might speedily force its way 
into all the dwelling-places : — this is what that 
God, who has the elements of the moral world at 
command, might have visited on a town which has 
witnessed so many a guilty sabbath, and harbours 
within its limits the ungodliness of so many profane 
and alienated families — In what preciousness, then, 
ought that sabbath to be held ; and what a boon 
from the kindness of long-suffering Heaven should 
we regard its quietness ; when, instead of such 
deeds of vengeance between townsmen and their 
fellows, they walked together in peaceful society 
to the house of prayer, and sat in peacefulnes* 
together at its best loved ordinance. 

The men who prize the value of this protection 



358 IMPORTANCE OF CIVIL GOVERNMENT, 

the most, are the men who feel most the need of 
human government, and who most revere it as an 
ordinance of God. Such is their opinion of the 
heart, that they beUeve, unless it be renewed by 
divine grace, there can be no translation into a 
blessed eternity ; and such is their opinion of the 
heart, that they believe, unless its native inclinations 
be repressed by human government, there can be 
no calm or protected passage along the track of 
conveyance in this world. Their loyalty emerges 
from their orthodoxy.. With them it has all the 
tenacity of principle ; and is far too deeply seated 
to be laid prostrate among the fierce and guilty 
agitations of the tumultuous. They have no part 
in the rancour of the disaffected ; and they have no 
part in the ambitiousness of the dark and daring 
revolutionist; and seeking, as they do, to lead a 
quiet and a peaceable Hfe, in all godliness arid 
honesty, a season of turbulence is to them a season 
of trial, and would be a season of diflficulty, had 
they not the politics of the Bible to guide their 
way among the threats and the terrors of surrounding 
desperadoes. " Honour the king, and meddle not 
with those who are given to change," are the inde- 
lible duties of a record that is indelible ; and they 
stamp a sacredness upon Christian loyalty. They 
are not at liberty to cancel what God has enacted, 
and to expunge what God has written. They 
are loyal because they are religious ; to suffer 
in such a cause is persecution, to die in it is 
martyrdom. 

There is a mischievous delusion on this subject. 
In the minds of many, and these too men of the 



IMPORTANCK OF CIVIL GOVERNMENT. 359 

first influence and station in the country, there is a 
haunting association which still continues to mislead 
them, even in the face of all evidence, and of all 
honest and credible protestation ; and in virtue of 
which they, to this very hour, conceive that such 
a religion as they call methodism, is the invariable 
companion of a plotting, artful, knd restless 
democracy. This is truly unfortunate ; for the 
thing called methodism is neither more nor less 
than Christianity in earnest; and yet they who so 
call it, have it most honestly at heart to promote 
the great object of a peaceful, and virtuous, and 
well-conditioned society ; and not therefore their 
disposition, which is right, but their apprehension 
upon this topic, which is egregiously wrong, has 
just had the effect of bending tlie whole line of 
their patronage and policy the wrong way. And 
thus are they unceasingly employed in attempting 
to kill, as a noxious plant, the only element 
which can make head against the tide of irreligion 
and blasphemy in our land ; conceiving, but most 
woefully wide of the truth in so conceiving, that 
there is a certain approving sympathy between 
the sanctity of the evangelical system, and the 
sedition that so lately has derided and profaned 
it. The doctrinal Christianity of this very epistle 
would be called methodistical by those to whom 
we are now alluding; but sure we are, that the 
disciple who goes along with Paul, while he travels 
in argument through the deeper mysteries of faith, 
will not abandon liim when, in the latter chapters 
of his work, he breaks forth into that efflorescence 
of beautiful and perfect morality with which hd 



360 IMPORTANCE OF CIVIL GOVERNMENT. 

winds up the whole of his wondrous demonstration^ 
but will observe the bidden conduct as a genuine 
emanation of the expounded creed — when told, 
that every soul should be subject unto the higher 
powers, and that there is no power but of God, 
and that the powers which be are ordained of 
God. And- whosoever, therefore, resisteth the 
power, resisteth the ordinance of God ; and they 
that resist shall receive to themselves damnation. 
Wherefore, ye must needs be subject, not only for 
wrath, but also for conscience' sake. 

III. We venture to affirm, that it is just the want 
of this Christianity in earnest which has brought 
our nation to the brink of an emergency so fearful 
as that upon which we are standing. Wlien So- 
lomon says, that it is righteousness which exalteth 
a nation, he means something of a deeper and more 
sacred character than the mere righteousness of 
society. This last may be learned in the school of 
classical or of civil virtue ; and an argument may 
be gathered in its behalf even from the views of an 
enlightened selfishness ; and, all lovely as it is in 
exhibition, may it draw from the tasteful admirers 
of what is fine in character even something more 
than a mere nominal acknowledgment. It may 
carry a certain extent of practical conformity over 
tne real and living habits of those who, faultless ia 
honour, and uprightness, and loyalty, are never- 
theless devoid of the religious principle altogether j 
and wlio, so far from being tainted with methodism, 
in the sense of that definition which we have already 
given of it, would both repudiate its advances upoa 



IMPORTANCE OF CIVIL GOVERNMENT, 361 

their own family, and. regret any visible inroads it 
might make on our general population. 

That Solomon does mean something more than 
the virtues to wich we are now alluding, is evident 
we think from this circumstance. The term 
righteousness, admits of a social and relative 
apphcation, and in this application, may introduce 
a conception into the mind that is exclusive of God. 
But the same cannot be said of the term sin. This 
generally suggests the idea of God as the Being 
sinned against. The one term does not so essentially 
express the idea of conformity to the divine law, as 
the other term expresses the idea of transgression 
against it. It does not carry up the mind so 
immediately to God ; because, with the utter absence 
of Him from our thoughts, may it still retain a 
substance and a significancy, as expressive of what 
is held to be right in a community of human being-s. 
It is well, then, that the clause, " Righteousness 
exalteth a nation," is followed up by the clause, 
" But sin is a reproach to any people ;" and tha< 
thus the latter term, which is equivalent toungodli 
ness by the contrast in which it stands with th > 
former term, leads us to the true impci t of the first 
of these two clauses, and gives us to understand 
Solomon as saying, that it is godliness that exalteth 
a nation. 

Cut away the substratum of godliness and how, 
we ask, will the secondary and the earth-born 
righteousness be found to thrive on the remaining 
soil which nature supplies for rearing it ? It is an 
error to think that it will make a total withdrawment 
of itself from the world. It will still be found, in 

VOL. VI. Q, 



302 IMPORTANCE OF CIVIL GOVERNMENT. 

Straggling specimens, among some sheltered and 
congenial spots even of this world's territory — at 
times among the haunts of lettered enthusiasm; 
and at times on the elevated staofe of a rank which 
stands forth to public notice, or of an opulence which 
is raised above the attacks of care and of tcniptatiori ; 
and, at times, on the rarely-occurring mould of a 
native equity, when, in middle and comfortable life, 
the rude urgencies of want and of vulgar ambition 
do not overbear it. Even there it will grow but 
sparingly, without the influences of the gospel ; 
as it did in those ages, and as it still does in those 
countries where the gospel is unknown. But, if 
you step down from those moral eminences, or if 
you come out from those few sweet and kindred 
retirements, where the moral verdure has stood, 
unblighted, even in the absence of Christianity, 
and thence go forth among the ample spaces, and 
the wide, and open, and general exposures of 
society ; if, on the arena of common life, you enter 
the teeming families of the poor, and hold converse 
witli the mighty host who scarcely know an interval 
between waUinsf hours of drudgery and hours of 
sleeping unconsciousness ; if, par.sing away from 
the abodes of refinement, you mingle with the many 
whose feelings and whose faculties are alike buflfeted 
ill the din and the dizzying of incessant labour — 
we mean to affix no stigma on the humbler 
brethren of our nature ; but we may at least be 
suffered to say, that among the richest of fortune 
and acompiislnnent in our land, we know not the 
individual whose virtues, if transplanted into the 
unkindlier region of poverty, would have withstood 



IMPORTANCE OF CIVIL GOVERNMENT. 363 

the operation of all the adverse, elements to which 
it is exposed, — unless upheld by that very godliness 
which he perhaps disowns, that very methodism on 
which perhaps he pours the cruelty of his derision. 
And here it may be remarked, how much the 
taste of many among the higher orders of society, 
is at war with the best security that can be devised 
for the peace and the well-being of society. There 
are many among them who admire the blossoms of 
virtue, while they dislike that only culture which 
can spread this lovely efflorescence over the whole 
field of humanity. They advert not to this — that the 
virtue which is cradled in the lap of abundance, and 
is blown into luxuriance among the complacencies 
of a heart at ease, would soon evince its frailty were 
it carried out among the exposures of an every-day 
world ; that there it would droop and perish under 
the uncongenial influences which, apart from 
religion, would positively wither up all the honesties 
and delicacies of humble life ; and therefore, that 
if th^y nauseate that gospel, which ever meets with 
its best acceptance, and works its most signal ef- 
fects upon the poor, they abandon the poor to that 
very depravity into which they themselves, had 
they been placed among the same temptations and 
besetting urgencies, would assuredly have fallen, 
The force of native integrity may do still what it 
did in the days of Pagan antiquity, when it reared 
its occasional specimens of worth and patriotism ; 
but it is thepowerof godliness, and that alone, which 
will reclaim our population in the length and 
breadth of it, and shed a moral bloom, and a moral 
fragrance, over the wide exoanse of society. But 



364 IMPORTANCE OF CIVIL GOVERNMENT. 

with many, and these too the holders of a great 
and ascendant influence in our land, godliness is 
pnritanism, and orthodoxy is repulsive moroseness, 
and the pure doctrine of the Apostles is fanatical 
and disgusting vulgarity ; and thus is it a possible 
thing, that in their hands the alone aliment oj 
public virtue may be withheld, or turned into poison. 
Little are they aware of the fearful reaction which 
may await their natural enmity to the truth as it is 
in Jesus ; and grievously have they been misled 
from the sound path, even of political wisdom, in 
the suspicion and intolerance wherewith they have 
regarded the dispensers of the word of life among 
the multitude. The patent way to disarm Nature 
of her ferocities, is to Christianize her ; and we 
should look on all our alarms with thankfulness, as 
so many salutary indications, did they lead either 
to multiply the religious edifices, or to guide the 
religious patronage of our land. 

But, again, it is not merely the taste of the 
higher orders which may be at war with the best 
interests of our country. It is also their example ; 
not their example of dishonesty, not their example 
of disloyalty, not their example of fierce and 
tumultuous violence, but an example of that which, 
however unaccompanied with any one of these 
crimes in their own person, multiplies them all 
upon the person of the imitators — we mean the 
example of their irreligion. A bare example oi 
integrity on the part of a rich man, who is freed 
from all temptations to the opposite, is not an 
effective example with a poor man, who is urgently 
beset at all hands with these temptations. It is 



IMPORTANCE OF CIVIL GOVERNMENT. 365 

thus that the most pure and honourable example 
which can sliine upon the poor from the upper 
walks of society, of what we have called the 
secondary and the earth-born righteousness, will 
never counterwork the mischief which emanates 
from the example that is there held forth of ungod- 
liness. It is the poor man's sabbath which is the 
source of his week-day virtues. The rich may 
have other sources ; but take away the sabbath 
from the poor, and you inflict a general desecration 
of character upon them. Taste, and Honour, and a 
native love of Truth, may be sufficient guarantees for 
the performance of duties to the breaking of which 
there is no temptation. But they are not enough 
for the wear and exposure of ordinary life. They 
make a feeble defence against such temptations as 
assail and agitate the men who, on the rack of their 
energies, are struggling for subsistence. With 
them the relative obligations hold more singly upon 
the religious ; and if the tie of rehgion, therefore, 
be cut asunder, the whole of their moratity will 
forthwith go into unhingement. Whatever virtue 
there is on the humbler levels of society, it holds 
direct of the sabbath and of the sanctuary ; and when 
.'hese cease to be venerable, the poor cease to be 
virtuous. You take away all their worth, when 
you take away the fear of God from before their 
Eyes ; and why then should we wonder at the result 
of a very general depravation among them, if before 
their eyes there should be held forth, on the part 
of their earthly superiors, an utter fearlessness of 
God ? The humbler, it ought not to be expected, 
will follow the higher classes on the ground of social 



366 IMPORTANCE OF CIVIL GOVERNMENT. 

virtue ; for they have other and severer difficulties 
to combat, and otlier temptations, over which the 
victory would be greatly more arduous. But the 
humbler will foil )w the higher on the ground ot 
irreligion. Only they will do it in their own style, 
and, perhaps, with the more daring and lawless 
spirit of those who riot in the excesses of a newly 
felt liberty. Should the merchant, to lighten the 
pressure of work in his counting-house, make over 
the arrears of his week-day corres,pondence to the 
snug and secret opportunity of the coming sabbath ; 
— the hard wrought labourer just follows up this 
example in his own way, when, not to lighten, but 
to solace the fatigue of the six days that are past, 
he spends the seventh in some haunt of low dissipa- 
tion. Should the man of capital, make his regular 
escape from the dull Sunday, and the still duller 
sermon, by a rural excursion, with his party of 
choice spirits, to the villa of weekly retreat, which 
by his wealth he has purchased and adorned — let 
it not be wondered at, that the man of drudgery is 
so often seen, with his band of associates, among 
the suburb fields and pathways of our city • or that 
the day which God hath commanded to be set 
apart for himself, should be set apart by so vast 
a multitude, who pour forth upon our outskirts, 
to the riot and extravagance of holiday. Should 
it be held indispensable for the accommodation 
of our higher citizens, that the great central 
lounge of politics, and periodicals, and news, be 
opened on sabbath to receive them ; then, though 
the door of publick entry is closed, and with the 
help of sceens, and hangings, and partial shatters, 



IMPORTANCE OF CIVIL GOVERNMENT. 367 

something like an homage is rendered to public 
decency, and the private approach is cunningly 
provided, and all the symptoms of sneaking and 
conscious impropriety are spread over the face of 
this guilty indulgence — let us not wonder, thongh 
the strength of example has forced its way through 
the impotency of all these wretched barriers, and 
that the reading-rooms of sedition and infidehty 
are now open every sabbath, for the behoof of our 
general population. Should the high-bred city 
gentleman hold it foul scorn to have the raillery of 
the pulpit thus let loose upon his habits, or that any 
person who fills it should so presume to tread upon 
his privileges — let us no longer wonder, if this very 
language, and uttered, too, in this very spirit, be 
re-echoed by the sour and sturdy Radical, who, 
equal to his superior in the principle of ungodliness, 
only outpeers him in his expressions of contempt 
for the priesthood, and of impetuous defiance to 
all that wears the stamp of authority in the land. 
It is thus that the impiety of our upper classes now 
glares upon us from the people, with a still darker 
reflection of impiety back again ; and that, in the 
general mind of our country, there is a suppressed 
but brooding storm, the first elements of which 
were injected by the men who now tremble the 
most under the dread of its coming violence. 

It is the decay of vital godliness amongst us, 
that has brought on this great moral distemper. 
It is irreligion which palpably lies at the bottom 
of it. Could it only have confined its influences 
among the sons of wealth or of lettered infidelity, 
society might have been safe. But tliis was im« 



368 IMPORTANCE OF CIVIL GOVERNMENT. 

possible ; and, now that it has broke forth on the 
wide and populous domain of humanity, is it seen 
that, while a slender and sentimental righteousness 
might have sufficed, at least, for this present world, 
and among those whom fortune has shielded from 
its adversities, it is only by that righteousness which 
is propped on the basis of piety that the great mass 
of a nation's virtue can be upholden. 

There is something in the histories of these Lon- 
don executions that is truly dismal.* It is like 
getting a glimpse into Pandtemonium ; nor do we 
believe that, in the annals of human depravity, 
did ever stout hearted sinners betray more fierce 
and unfeeling hardihood. It is not that part of 
the exhibition which is merely revolting to sensitive 
nature that we are now alluding to. It is not the 
struggle, and the death, and the shrouded operator, 
and the bloody heads that were carried round the 
scaffold, and the headless bodies of men who but 
one hour before, lifted their proud defiance to the 
God in whose presence the whole decision of their 
spirits must by this time have melted away. It is 
the moral part of the exhibition that is so appal- 
ling. It is the firm desperado step with which 
they ascended to the place of execution. It is the 
.tndaunted scowl which they cast on the dread 
apparatus before them. It is the frenzied and 
bacchanalian levity with which they bore up their 
courage to the last, and earned, in return, the 
applause of thousands as fierce and as frenzied as 
themselves. It is the unquelled daring of the 

• Executions of men who had conspired for the murder of Um 
Ministers of State. 



IMPORTANCE OF CIVIL oOVERXMENT. 369 

man, who laughed, and who sung, and who cheered 
the multitude, ere he took his leap into eternity, 
and was cheered hy the multitude, rending the air 
with approhation back again. These are the 
doings of infidelity. These are the genuine ex- 
hibitions of the popular mind, after that Religion 
has abandoiied it. It is neither a system of un- 
christian morals, nor the meagre Christianity of those 
who deride, as methodistical, all the peculiarities 
of our Faith, that will recall our neglected popula- 
tion. There is not one other expedient by which 
you will recover the olden character of England, 
but by going forth with the gospel of Jesus Christ 
among its people. Nothing will subdue them, but 
that regenerating power which goes along with the 
faith of the New Testament. And nothing will 
charm away the alienation of their spirits, but their 
belief in the overtures of redeeming mercy. 

But we may expatiate too long ; and let us 
therefore hasten to a close with a few brief and 
categorical announcements, which we shall simply 
leave with you as materials for your own consid- 
eration. 

First, though social virtue, and loyalty, which 
is one of its essential insredients, may exist in the 
upper walks of life apart from godliness— yet godli- 
ness, in the hearts of those who have the brunt of 
all the common and popular temptations to stand 
against, is the main and efiective hold that we 
have upon them for securing the righteousness of 
their lives. 

Secondly, the despisers of godliness are the 
enemies of the true interest of our nation ; and it 
a2 



S70 IMPORTANCE OF CIVIL GOVERNMENT. 

is possible that, under the name of methodism, 
that very in-strument may be put away which can 
alone recall the dep;jriiag virtues of our land. 

Thirdly, where godliness exists, loyalty exists ; 
and 110 p'lausible delusion — no fire of their own 
kindling, lighted at the torch of false or spurious 
patriotism, will ever eclipse the light of this plain 
autlioritaiive scripture—" Honor the King, and 
meddle not with those who are given to change." 

But, again, such is the power of Christianity, 
that, even though partially introduced in the whole 
extent of its saving and converting influences, it 
may work a general effect on the civil and secular 
virtues of a given neighbourhood. It is thus that 
(Christianity may only work the salvation of a few, 
while it raises the standard of morality among many. 
The reflex influence of one sacred character upon 
the vicinity of his residence may soften, and purify, 
and overawe many others, even where it does not 
spiritualize them. This is encouragement to begin 
with. It lets us perceive that, even before a great 
spiritual achievement has been finished, a kind of 
derived and moral influence may have widely and 
visibly spread among the population. It is thus 
that Christians are the salt of the earth ; and we 
know not how few they are that may preserve society 
at large from falling into dissolution. It is because 
there are so very few among us, that our nation 
stands on the brink of so fearful an emergency. 
Were there fewer, our circumstances would be 
still more fearful ; and if, instead of this, there were 
a few more, the national virtue may reattain all the 
lustre it ever had, even while a small fraction of 



IMt'ORTANCi-: OF CIVIL GOVERNMENT. 371 

our people are spiritual men. It is in this way, 
that we would defend those who so sangninely 
couut on the power of Christianity, from the impu- 
tation of being at all romantic in their hopes or 
undertakings. It may take ages ere their ultimate 
object, which is to generalize the spirit and char- 
acter of the millennium in our world, he acconi 
plished. But if there were just a tendency to go 
iorth among our people on the errand of Christian- 
izing them, and that tendency were not thwarted 
by the enmity and intolerance of those who revile, 
and discourage, and set at nought all the activities 
of religious zeal, we should not be surprised though, 
in a few years, a resurrection were witnessed 
amongst us of all the virtues that establish and that 
exalt a nation. 

But, lastly, alarming as the aspect of the times is, 
and deeply tainted and imbued as the minds of many 
are with infidelity ; and widely spread as the habit 
has become of alienation from all the ordinances 
of religion ; and sullen as the contempt may be, 
wherewith the hardy blasphemer of Christianity 
would hearken to its lessons, and eye its ministers, 
yet even he could not so withstand the honest and 
persevering good-will of one on whom there stood, 
visibly announced, the single-hearted benevolence 
of the gospel, as either to refuse him a tribute of 
kindliness, when he met him on the street, or as to 
reject, with incivility and disdain, the advances he 
made upon his own family. Even though he should 
sternly refuse to lend himself to any of the processes 
of a moral and spiritual operator, yet it is a fact 
experimentally known, that he will not refuse to 



372 IMPORTANCE OF CIVIL GOVERNMENT. 

lend his children. The very man who, iinpitying 
of himself, danced and sung on the herders of that 
abyss which wastoingulf himin a lake of vengeance 
for ever, even he had abont him a partof surviving 
tenderness, and lie could positively weep when he 
thought of his family. He who, had he met a 
minister of state would have murdered him, had he 
met the sabbath-school teacher who ventured across 
his threshold, and simply requested the attendance 
of his children, might have tried (o bear a harsh 
and repulsive front against him, but would Jiave 
found it to be impossible. .Here is a feeling which 
even the irreligion of the times has not obliterated, 
and it has left, as it were, an open door of access, 
through which we might at length find our way to 
the landing-place of a purer and better generation. 
We hear much of the olden time, when each parent 
presided over the religion of his own family, and 
acted, every sabbath evening, the patriarch of 
Christian wisdom among the inmates of his own 
dwelling-place. How is it that this beautiful picture 
is again to be realized? Is it by persuasives, 
however forcible, addressed to those who never 
listen to them ? Is it by the well-told regrets of a 
mere indolent senlimentalism? Is it by lifting up 
a voice, that will die in distance away, long ere it 
reach that mighty population who He so remote 
from all our churches, and from all our ordinances? 
Are we to be interdicted from bending the twig 
wiih a strength which we do have, because 
others require of us to bend the impracticable 
tree, with a strength which we do not have? The 
question is a practical one, and should be met 



IMPORTANCE OF CIVIL GOVERNMENT. 373 

experimentally ;— how is the olden time to be 
brought back again ? Is it by merely looking back 
upon it with an^eye of tasteful contemplation ; or, is 
it by letting matters alone ; or, is it by breathing 
indignation and despite against all the efforts of 
religious philanthropy; or, is it by disdainful 
obloquy against those who do something, on the 
part of those that do nothing ? Who, in a future 
generation, will be the likeliest parents for setting 
up the old system? the children who now run 
neglected through the streets, or those who. snatched 
from sabbath profanation, receive a weekly training 
among the decencies and the docilities of a religious 
school? It is not the experimental truth upon 
this question, that the amount of family religion is 
lessened, under such an arrangement, in those 
houses where it had a previous existence ; but 
that, instead of this, it is often established in houses 
where it was before unknown. It is true, that 
unless a sabbath-school apparatus be animated by 
the Spirit of God, it will not bear with effect on 
the morals of the rising generation ; but still it is 
by the frame-work of some apparatus or other that 
the Spirit works : and we deem that the likeliest 
and the best devised for the present circumstances 
of our country, which can secure, and that imme- 
diately, the most abundant strength of application 
on tender and susceptible childhood.* 



* Had not the Sermon been extended to so great a length, its 
Author might have entered a little more into detail on the opera- 
tion and advantage of the sabbath-school system ; an omission, 
however, which he less regrets, as, in the work of supplying it, 
he would have done little more than repeated what he has pub- 
lisLed on the subject, in a more express furm. 



374 IMPOUTANCE OF CIVIL GOVEUNMKNT. 

In conclusion, we may advert to a certain clafw 
of society, now happily on the decline, who are 
fearful of enlightening the poor ; and would rather 
that every thintr was suffered to remain in the 
quiescence of its present condition ; and though 
the Bible may be called the key to the kingdom of 
Heaven, yet, associating, as they do, the turbulence 
of the people with the supposed ascent that they 
have made in the scale of information, would not 
care so to depress them beneath the level of their 
present scanty literature, as virtually to deny them 
the use and the possession of the Oracles of God. 
Such is the unfeeling policy of those who would 
tluis smother all the capabilities of hinnble life, and 
lay an interdict on the cultivation of human souls 

The same remark applies to the cursory allu ion that he has 
made oil llAit nielaacholy topic, the lack of city churches, and the 
nnwif.ldy extent of city parishes; he havinj?, elsewhere, both de- 
livered the arithmetical statements upon this topic, and also 
ventured to suggest the gradual remedy that mi.ii;ht be provided 
for the restoration of church-going habits among the people of our 
great towns. 

He takes the opportunity which this Note affords him, of refer 
ring the atlention of his readers to a truly Christian charge, drawn 
up by the Methodist body in November 1819, on the subject of the 
political discontents which then agitated the country. It was 
circulated, he understands, among the members and ministers of 
that connexion, and ought for ever to dissolve the imagination of 
any alliance between the spirit of methodism, and the spirit of a 
factious or disaffected turbulence. 

He would further observe, that the mighty influence of a> sab- 
bath on the general moral and religious character of the people, 
may serve to vindicate the zeal of a former generation about thia 
one observance; a zeal which is regarded by many as altogether 
misplaced and puritanical. Without entering into the question, 
wheiher the Law of the Country should interfere to shield thii 
day from outward and visible profanation, it may at least he 
alTirmed, that the opinion of thosr< who rate the alternations of 
Christianity in a laud, by the fluctuating regards which, from oua 
age to another, are rendered to the Christian Sabbath, is deeply 
founded on the true philosophy of our nature. 



IMPORTANCK OF CTVIL GOVERNMENT. 375 

and barter away the eternity of the lower orders, 
for the temporal safety and protection of the higher, 
and, in the false imagination, that to sow knowledge 
is to sow sedition in the Ian J, look suspiciously and 
hardly on any attempt thus to educate the inferior 
classes of society. It is well that these bugbears 
are rapidly losing their influence — and we know 
not how far this is due to our late venerable 
monarch, who, acting like a father for the good of 
his people, certainly did much to rebuke this cruel 
and unfeeling policy away from his empire. His 
saying, that he hoped to see the time, when there 
should not be a poor child in his dominions who 
was not taught to read the Bible, deserves to be 
enshrined among the best and the wisest of all the 
memorabilia of other days. It needs only the 
Saj^on antiquity of Alfred, to give it a higher place 
than is given to all that is recorded even of his 
wisdom. We trust that it will be embodied in the 
remembrance of our nation, and be handed down 
as a most precious English tradition, for guiding 
the practice of English families ; and that, viewed 
as the memorial of a Patriot King, it will supplant 
the old association (hat obtained between know- 
ledge and rebellion, and raise a new association in 
its place, between the cause of education and the 
cause of loyalty. Be assured, that it is not be- 
cause the people know too much, that they ever 
become the willing subjects of any factious or 
unprincipled demagogue -it is just because they 
know too little. It is just because ignorance is 
the field on which the quackery of a political im- 
ostor ever reaps its most abundant harvest. II 



376 IMPORTANCE OF CIVIL GOVERNMENT. 

is tliis which arms him with all his superiority ; and 
the way eventually to protect society from the 
fermentation of such agitators, is to scatter 
throughout the mass as much of knowledge and 
information as wi'' equalize the people to the men 
wiio bear them no ether regard, than as the instru- 
ments of uproar and overthrow. No coercion can 
so keep down the cause of scholarship, as that 
there shall not be a sufficient number, both of 
educated and unprincipled men, to plot the dis- 
turbance and overthrow of all the order that exists 
in society. You cannot depress these to the level 
of popular ignorance, in a country where schools 
have not been universally instituted. Yon cannot 
unscholar demagogues down to the level of an 
untaught multitude ; and the only remaining alter- 
native is, to scholar the multitude up to the level 
of demagogues. Let Scotland,* even in spite of 
the exhibition that she has recently made, be com- 
pared with the other two great portions of our 
British territory, and it will be seen, historically, 



♦What we regret most in our late disturbances, is, that it may 
■erve to foment the prejudice which still exists against the cause 
of popular education. It is worthy of remark, that, of late y^nrs, 
both in Glasgow and Paisley, this cause has been most lamentably 
on the decline; insomuch that we will venture to say, there is no 
town population in Scotland which has become so closely assimi- 
lated, in this respect, to the manufacturing population cf our 
sister country. Any danger which may be conceived to arise 
from education, proceeds not from the extent of it in any one 
class of society, but from the inequality of it between people either 
of the same, or of different classes; thus rendering one part of 
the population more manageably subservient to ap" designing 
villany or ar'ifice that may exist in another part. The clear 
and direc. A'^y of restoring this inequality, is, not V> darken and 
degrade all, *hich is iaipracicable, but, as much aa possible, to en> 
iighten all 



IMPORTANCE OF CIVIL GOVERNMENT. 377 

as well as argumentatively, that the way to tran- 
quillize a people is not to enthral but to enlighten 
them. It is, in short, with general knowledge as 
it is with the knowledge of Christianity. There 
are incidental evils attendant on the progress of 
both ; but a most glorious consummation will be 
the result of the perfecting of both. Let us go 
forth, without restraint, on the work of evangelizing 
the world, and the world, under such a process, 
will become the blissful abode of Christian and 
well-ordered families. And let ns go forth, with 
equal alacrity, to the work of spreading education 
among our own people ; an.d, instead of bringing 
on an anticipated chaos, will it serve to grace and 
to strengthen all the bulwarks of security in the 
midst of us. The growth of intelligence and of 
moral Avorth among the people, will at length star.ip 
upon them all that majesty of which they will et;er 
be ambitious ; and, instead of a precarious tranquil 
Uty, resting upon the basis of an ignorance 3V 3r 
open to the influences of delusion, will theelemin ta 
nf peace, and truth, and righteousness, be seen o 
multiply along with the progress of learning iu.<* « 
(«nd. 

fiND OF VOLUME SIXTH. 




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